Rome. himself, and so kindly dismissed him to | Greek language, however, profitably occupied his thoughts, and the birth of a daughter whom he named Francesca, aided in distracting them. The favour in which he now stood with the powerful lords of Italy, also prevented him from suffering melancholy. At one time the Pope's ambassador to Naples, then the mediator between two powerful republics, he saw himself honoured by a whole nation, and flattered by all that nation's rulers. Once, on returning through a disturbed territory to Vaucluse, he was attacked by robbers, and passed a fearful night as he sought to escape. But even this danger produced for him a manifestation most grateful to his soul. He was reported to have been killed, and universal mourning saddened the whole race which spoke his language, while elegies, very sincere, though very unpoetical, were lavished on the consecration of his memory. He now passed a whole year near Laura, and his sonnets display the fluctuating feelings of his heart. Some are exuberant of joy; some flow like the very waters of sorrow-so musical and soft they are. To Rome, then, Petrarca went, treading, as he passed, near the dust of Virgil. On the 8th of April, 1341, innumerable trumpets blew a matin over all the Eternal City. Throngs of people filled the streets and open places. Twelve noble youths in robes of scarlet led the procession, chaunting Petrarca's lyric in praise of the Roman people. Next came six citizens clothed in green, with garlands on their heads, and Petrarca walked in the midst of them, dressed in the royal garment of Naples. Then came the chief senator, and then a train of the great council; and they all trod upon scattered blossoms as they went, while the flowers of Italian beauty sprinkled perfumes on the head of the poet as he passed along. At the capitol the trumpets ceased. Petrarca addressed the multitude, and cried viva for the Roman people, viva for the senators, viva for liberty. Next he kneeled before the senator Örso, who, taking a crown of laurel from his own head, placed it on that of Petrarca, saying, "This crown is the reward of virtue." Rising with the bloom of a nation's love upon his brows, he repeated a sonnet in praise of the ancient people whose memory is immortal there and throughout the world. A tremendous shout of applause rose around the capitol. The friends of the poet shed tears of joy; the orators spoke of him amid thunders of gratulations; and so, acclaimed and honoured, he went to the church of Saint Peter and laid his laurels on the altar. On the same day, he received the emblazoned patent or memorial of the title which had been conferred, and the privileges appertaining to it. After a short stay at Rome he went to Pisa, where we are surprised to hear him complaining of the neglect of his works, as we are afterwards when he repents of accepting the laurel. From Pisa he journeyed to Parma, where he was consulted in the most important deliberations of state, and enjoyed the Italian retirement he loved; but he was within a year forced to go to Avignon as advocate of the Roman people to the new Pope, Clement II. Apparently he had won his heart from its fatal love, but the influence of Laura's presence rekindled its intensity, especially as her behaviour to him was even more friendly than before. The study of the Avignon is described by Petrarca to have been the Babylon of the West. It was the centre of intrigue, and the palace of luxury. The fantastic brilliance of a masque perpetually filled its halls with revelry; and the fêtes of princes, and pageants of cardinals, made it for a time the most attractive city of Europe. Laura was in the poet's eyes, the embellishment of every beautiful scene, the queen of Allegro. After he had met her many times, he secluded himself for a year "by Sorga's waters" in Vaucluse. Here he continually wept away the sweetness of his feelings in those delightful dewfalls of music which are the most exquisite effusions in the Tuscan tongue. He had now the privilege of visiting Laura at her own house, and when she was threatened with blindness, her pain was immortalized in a sonnet, which is to the expression of grief in poetry what Carlo Dolci's picture is in painting. How strange had been the history of his love! For twenty years it had continued. Hume, who was Jeremy Bentham in another shape, declares that all intense passions are fleeting. Hume knew nothing about it. He had never known the noblest sentiment. He was incapable of admiring it. The truth is that none but intense passion can be of long duration. In Petrarca, there was the most violent passion, yet it was continuous and steady through a long course of years. It has been said that this, if unhappy for himself, was fortu nate for mankind, because to this guilty and miserable love we owe the richest poetry of the first poet. We deny it. Petrarca would have written far more spiritually and sweetly, had a pure and fortunate love possessed his breast. Had the holy influence of Christianity tempered his mind, he would have sacrificed unworthy desires, and have risen in dignity and worth. Laura's conduct was objectionable, and helped to prolong the lamentable delusion. Meantime, he continued his labours of literature, and produced some elaborate compositions which deserve to be remembered. Petrarca bade her farewell; he looked upon her countenance—it was pale and sad; he looked into her eyes—they seemed prophetic of sorrow. He turned away, and passing out of the chamber, never saw Laura again. After being tossed to and fro in the commotions of Italy, which he vainly sought to appease, we find him once more in Parma. There he heard that Laura had perished of the plague. She died on the 1st of April, 1348, at Avignon, at the same house in which he first met her. "I have nothing now left," wrote he, "worth living for." The elegiac sonnets, after her death, are so profuse of adorations as to be profane. Meanwhile, though this was the one passion which ruled his nature, his share in the affairs of Italy was active. He raised the Florentines; he urged the Emperor to interfere for the peace Public events made him once more a of the nation, and he untiringly laboured patriot. Rienzi accomplished his cele- to cement alliances between the rebrated revolution in Rome. His au- maining free states. His friendship thority, in the name of freedom, was with Boccacio also occupied much of established, and his emissaries were re-his mind. It began late, however, and ceived with respect in every court of was soon ended by the death of that Europe. Petrarca's bosom glowed with wonderful writer. parts of Italy, and he was everywhere influencing those events. We find him rushing, as it were, from city to city. Half Italy flies by us in a panorama, as we follow the errant poet-Padua, Verona, Mantua, Parma, Arezzo, Naples, Milan, Venice, all appear and disappear in the dissolving view, as Petrarca now negotiates peace, now threatens war, now proposes the marriage of a prince, now amnesty for a tribune, now elevation for a Cardinal, in the name of Emperor, or King, or Pope, or Republic in turn. Sometimes he escapes from the throng of men and events, rushing over the beautiful peninsula, to his own fountain at Vaucluse, where his sorrow exultation, and he enthusiastically ap- It would, however, be impossible, plauded the great Tribune, who seemed within the limits of a sketch like this, to have renewed the vital spring of to trace closely the career of Petrarca Italian liberty. Now he felt that Avig-after Laura was lost to his love and to non was not the abode for him. If his hope. He was a wanderer. The Rome was becoming regenerate, where strangest events were occurring in all should he be but at the capital, where the authority of every patriot was required to uphold a constitution well established, but not wisely maintained. The poet, however, while Rienzi was throwing away his own fame, and the freedom he had won for the people, determined to proceed to the city which had crowned him. Yet he could not go without an adieu from Laura. His sad sonnets still multiplied upon her name, and how hopeless he was, after twenty years of devotion, may be conceived from the melodious line "Sull' onde, e'n vena fondo, e scrivo in vento;" "I plough in water, build on sand, and write in air." Now that he went to see her, for the last time before his de-laden verse is poured out in golden parture, it was with more than ordinary emotion. She was at an assembly which he often frequented-she appeared, he tells us, like a beautiful rose. Her demeanour was unusually touching. No pearls or flowers adorned her garments or her hair; she was thoughtful and serious, and did not consent to sing. floods on the memory of Laura. Never, perhaps, did a poet occupy a more splendid position. Twenty years of his changeful life passed like an epic, and he was ever conspicuous amid insurrections, wars, triumphs, and revolutions, flattered by the great, beloved by the humble, with a name resounding through the South so loudly, that its echoes may be believed eternal. All the while the deep springs of his poetic mind flowed forth in those sweet and delicate sonnets, which are the pride of Italy. When, therefore, after a career during which he had distinguished himself in every position which as a man or as a citizen he could occupy, he retired, in his sixty-third year, to Arqua, it was with a renown not equalled by that of any poet, or patriot, or conqueror, or despot in the world. He now made his will and retreated to Arqua, on the slope of a beautiful hill near Padua. A delicious air eternally breathed in that place. Rich vineyards girt it delightfully, and yielded the most fragrant wine. The breath of the mountain range came balmily and freshly upon him, but the toils of his long and troubled life had worn him out. During the summer of 1370 he continued ill-and his malady was attributed to drinking water, eating fruit, and fasting immoderately. He was also distressed by poverty, for he was hospitable and had a perfect tribe of friends constantly visiting him. He was obliged to keep two horses and five or six amanuenses, which were not easily to be procured. Of this he complains in very melancholy terms. So violent was his fever that once his physicians thought him dead. Ten times during ten years, indeed, he had been pronounced past recovery. On this occasion, however, they had said that he might possibly survive the night, if he was prevented from sleeping. They then left, declaring that he could by no mortal chance exist beyond daylight. Petrarca, as soon as they were gone, told the attendants not to disturb him, since he wished to sleep. At daylight the physicians came. Not only had the patient slept; not only was he alive; but he was at his table writing. "He is not like other men," they exclaimed. Still, he was never again well. When, in the spring of 1372, he attempted to ride out, he could only go a few paces from the door. The debility of his frame was fixed; but there was yet a wealth in his mind, which gave its last manifestation in a noble letter to Venice, exhorting that Republic for the sake of liberty, for the sake of Italy, for the sake of their common pride and their com mon hope, to seal the bond of peace. His name once more electrified the Venetian people; but all his ardent thoughts now burned in a lamp whose oil was well nigh spent. On the 18th of June, 1374, Petrarca went, late at night, into his library, and remained a long while alone. Some one required to see him. His attendants went in. They found him with his head reclined on a book. He was accustomed to rest in this attitude, and they were not alarmed. But he was observed to be very still. They approached him, and touched him. He was rigid and cold. There was that night a deep gloom in Arqua, and next day, all Padua, and all the dwellers on the beautiful hills around mourned for the poet they had lost. And soon the sorrowful news spread over Italy, and in every place where his sweet writings had made his name like that of a familiar friend, men wept for his death, as though each one had been bereaved. Sixteen professors bore his bier to the grave, and every poet in the land made some offering in memory of the lover of Laura. They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died. The personal character and the writings of Petrarca we consider a more interesting subject of inquiry, than the events of the latter part of his life. We do not remember him as the diplomatist, but as the man and the poet. Amiable we must confess him to have been, and exempt from the baser foibles. He was candid, generous, and of a soft disposition, and without craft. When he attacked, it was with temper, though many have blamed the fierceness of his invective against the corruptions of the Church of Rome. Yet none pretends that he laid more to the charge of the ecclesiastics than was exactly true. If there was a quality in him which we respect less than another, it was his attachment to proud and powerful men, who, as his intellect must have perceived, were playing falsely with the Italians. They who describe him as a vagabond favourite of the rich and great, exhibit no competence to criticise; but we are inclined to accept Sismondi's estimate of his worldly and voluptuous character. His affections were indeed comparatively stationary, while he migrated more than any bird. Yet his only enduring love was of a woman, who was married to another, and his next attachment was to a woman whom folio pages-and the subjects are ethihe ought to have married himself. cal, philosophical, and imaginative. Generous he may have been; but independent we cannot think he was, or he would never have become an inmate of the Visconti palace. Vain of himself, he was hasty in his judgment of others. Religious feeling was not developed in his life. He professed to hold a pure creed, and to acknowledge the laws of Christianity, yet he never sacrificed to piety one desire of his soul. We know that it has been the fashion to extenuate his pertinacious suit to Laura. But the apologists must explain their ground. Do they believe, or do they not, that a poet of genius, because he was a poet of genius, that Petrarca because he was Petrarca, could pursue an evil course of action with less moral guilt than any other man? His poetry was principally devoted to Laura. The absorption of his heart in one feeling was so entire that it became frantic. At least we are willing to pardon as insane, what we should else stigmatize as blasphemous. Can anything more repulsive be imagined than his comparison of the sacredness of her birth-place to the Bethlehem, where Jesus was born? Such passages, however, seldom occur. She is usually painted chaste and beautiful, by a chaste and beautiful pen. His sonnets have been complained of as monototous, because they are never infused with anger or jealousy. Sometimes he is joyful, sometimes melancholy, but invariably tender. We confess that this is not what displeases us in Petrarca. In literature Petrarca was as a fountain which refreshed and invigorated There is in the language of his sonthe mind of a whole age. As a Latinist | nets a pure and melting melody, a delihe was not so pure as many who suc- cate and spiritual grace, an aerial buoyceeded him, but through his labours the ancy of thought, so delightful that we purest of his successors attained to their can dwell on them incessantly. In the purity. The plethora of his classical canzoni, though they are exquisitely allusions would be pedantic now, but versified, we find less of the real witchwas elegant and tasteful then. Heery of his pen, and in the "Trionfi," the cleared the way for the restoration of "subordinate parts and images,” in the ancient learning. He enlarged and en-language of an English critic, “have a couraged the science of geography. In beauty rather arabesque than classical.” philosophy he is not easily intelligible. It is so grandly conceived however, and Cicero and Seneca indeed influenced pervaded by a tone so rich and deep, his mind; and he adopted the theory that it will never lose its place in liteof Plato, that love is a rapturous trance rature. of the soul, abstracted from all animal passion. But his imagination coloured his philosophical ideas most fancifully, especially those concerning the beatitude of an immortal life, which he fixed in the stars. Campbell seems to describe the Latin Epic on Africa very justly, when he calls it an ambitious failure It was a dead and cold composition. The shorter Latin poems are more interesting, especially the satirical eclogues which have also an historical value. The prose epistles, however, are his best compositions in that language. His prose works occupy eleven hundred printed In this estimate of Petrarca, we have endeavoured to subdue the picture to the tints of truth, because in analyzing the life and the works of such a man, more than commonly temperate criticism is required. He has been made a demi-god, and he has been made half a knave. What is worse, he has become among thousands of educated persons, almost a tradition. They talk of him and do not inquire what he did, or read what he wrote. Let us hope that this fashion will pass away, and that the master-minds of letters will resume their influence in the world, 23 GEORGE FOX. STATISTICAL authorities tell us that with the public largely depends on their the Society of Friends threatens to be- accuracy in observing the relations of come extinct. But as in chemical historical sequence. For instance, the changes we have only transformation, or as in geological vicissitudes denudation in one place necessarily implies aggregation of the same materials in another place, so fares it with the world of principles and opinions. Having done their work in one form, they assume another, better fitted, we believe, to promote individual and social progress. Perhaps there never were so few Quakers in England since the Restoration when their Society was fairly established as at present.* But never was there so much essential Quakerism outside its pale. The central trunk may be decaying; the spiritual independence in which its life originated may be partly oppressed and stifled by a dead bark of traditionary forms; but new suckers have been sent out from the root, hardly less vigorous, and promising freer and larger growth than the main stem. The views of many of our philanthropists, our ecclesiastical and social reformers whether right or wrong-are virtually contained in the intuitions of the early Friends, as the following sketch will indicate. author of a popular fiction, whose scene and dress are laid in the period in question, introduces us to a lady of the Quaker persuasion, at a time when the founder had scarcely made up his mind what Quakerism was to be. Again, with respect to the share which Fox had in forming the Society, we think it unfair to his memory to state, that he "only laid the foundation; it was reserved for Barclay and Penn to raise the superstructure." Happily, in these latter days, we have begun to pay more respect to individual influence than did our immediate forefathers; and to look with suspicion upon the theory which would resolve great moral results into a mere "concourse" of intellectual or moral atoms. In the present case, indeed, it needs but a slight acquaintance with the early annals of this remarkable institution to be well assured, that if ble marks of his individual idiosyncracy ever a founder left strong and indubitain the essential characteristics of the sect which he established, it was George Fox. Even its more trivial peculiarities bear the stamp of his times, his position in society, and his personal tastes and antipathies. Had he been born in a discourse would probably have no more higher social grade, the "you" of polite offended him than the numerous conventional departures from strict simpli Few facts of minor historical interest have been more misapprehended, than the connection between the origin of the Society of Friends, and its present character and position. It has been a prevalent idea, that the Quakerism of the present day, with its moral influence and respectability, sprang origi-city and humility in language, of which nally from the merest fanaticism; that, servant in his own circle. Had his ear unvarying use had made him unobwith the exception perhaps of William been more enamoured of sweet sounds, Penn and his famous colony, there is lit-it is, we think, highly probable that tle in its early history, which presents an essential similarity to the more attractive features which it now exhibits. Still less justice has been done to the *In 1659 they were reckoned at 30,000. At present there are less than 20,000.-Mr. Howitt's article on 66 Quakers," in the Encyclopædia Brit tanica. music would not have been regarded as |