_September_ 6_th_.—At Padua, I was too near the last and one of the most
celebrated abodes of Petrarch, to make the omission of a visit excusable;
had I not been in a disposition to render such a pilgrimage peculiarly
pleasing. I set forwards from Padua after dinner, so as to arrive some
time before sunset. Nothing could be finer than the day; and I had every
reason to promise myself a serene and delicious hour, before the sun
might go down. I put the poems of Petrarch into my pocket; and, as my
road lay chiefly through lanes, planted on either side with mulberries
and poplars, from which vines hung dangling in careless festoons, I found
many a bowering shade, where I sat, at intervals, to indulge my pensive
humour over some ejaculatory sonnet; as the pilgrim, on his journey to
Loretto, reposes here and there, to offer his prayers and meditations to
the Virgin. In little more than an hour and half, I found myself in the
midst of the Euganean hills, and, after winding almost another hour
amongst them, I got, before I was well aware, into the village of Arqua.
Nothing can be more sequestered or obscure than its situation. It had
rather a deserted appearance; several of its houses being destitute of
inhabitants, and crumbling into ruins. Two or three of them, however,
exhibited ancient towers, richly mantled with ivy, and surrounded with
cypress, that retained the air of having once belonged to persons of
consideration. Their present abandoned state nourished the melancholy
idea with which I entered the village. Could one approach the last
retreat of genius, and not look for some glow of its departed splendour?
“Dear to the pensive eye of fond regret,
Is light still beaming from a sun that’s set.”
The residence of Petrarch at Arqua is said to have drawn thither from
Padua the society of its more enlightened citizens. This city, whilst
Petrarch lived in its neighbourhood, was engaged in rebellion against the
Venetians; and Francis de Carrara, the head of it, went often to Arqua,
to consult Petrarch; when he found himself obliged to sue to Venice for
peace. The poet was indeed deputed, upon this occasion, his ambassador
to the state; as being a person whose character and credit were most
likely to appease its wrath. His success in this embassy might, perhaps,
have been some recompense for an employment he accepted with much regret,
as it forced him from his beloved retirement. In a letter to one of his
friends, written about this period of his life, he says: “I pass the
greatest part of the year in the country, which I have always preferred
to cities: I read; I write; I think: thus, my life and my pleasures are
like those of youth. I take pains to hide myself; but I cannot escape
visits: it is an honour which displeases and wearies me. In my little
house on the Euganean hills, I hope to pass my few remaining days in
tranquillity, and to have always before my eyes my dead, or my absent,
friends.” I was musing on these circumstances as I walked along the
village, till a venerable old woman, seated at her door with her distaff
in her hand, observing me, soon guessed the cause of my excursion; and
offered to guide me to Petrarch’s house. The remainder of my way was
short, and well amused by my guide’s enthusiastic expressions of
veneration for the poet’s memory; which, she assured me, she felt but in
common with the other inhabitants of the village. When we came to the
door of the house, we met the peasant, its present possessor. The old
woman, recommending the stranger and his curiosity to her neighbour’s
good offices, departed. I entered immediately, and ran over every room,
which the peasant assured me, in confirmation of what I before learnt
from better authority, were preserved, as nearly as they could be, in the
state Petrarch had left them. The house and premises, having
unfortunately been transmitted from one enthusiast of his name to
another, no tenants have been admitted, but under the strictest
prohibition of making any change in the form of the apartments, or in the
memorial relics belonging to the place: and, to say the truth, everything
I saw in it, save a few articles of the peasant’s furniture in the
kitchen, has an authentic appearance. Three of the rooms below stairs
are particularly shown, and they have nothing in them but what once
belonged to the poet. In one, which I think they call his parlour, is a
very antique cupboard; where, it is supposed, he deposited some precious
part of his literary treasure. The ceiling is painted in a grotesque
manner. A niche in the wall contains the skeleton of his favourite cat,
with a Latin epigram beneath, of Petrarch’s composition. It is good
enough to deserve being copied; but the lateness of the hour did not
allow me time. A little room, beyond this, is said to have been his
study: the walls of it, from top to bottom, are scribbled over with
sonnets, and poetical eulogies on Petrarch, ancient and modern: many of
which are subscribed by persons, of distinguished rank and talents,
Italians as well as strangers. Here, too, is the bard’s old chair, and
on it is displayed a great deal of heavy, ornamental carpentry; which
required no stretch of faith to be believed the manufacture of the
fourteenth century. You may be sure, I placed myself in it, with much
veneration, and the most resigned assent to Mrs. Dobson’s relation: that
Petrarch, sitting in this same chair, was found dead in his library, with
one arm leaning on a book. Who could sit in Petrarch’s chair, void of
some effect? I rose not from it without a train of pensive sentiments
and soft impressions; which I ever love to indulge. I was now led into a
larger room, behind that I first saw; where, it is likely enough, the
poet, according to the peasant’s information, received the visits of his
friends. Its walls were adorned with landscapes and pastoral scenes, in
such painting as Petrarch himself might, and is supposed to have
executed. Void of taste and elegance, either in the design or colouring,
they bear some characteristic marks of the age to which they are, with no
improbability, assigned; and, separate from the merit of exhibiting
repeatedly the portraits of Petrarch and Laura, are a valuable sketch of
the rude infancy of the art, where it rose with such hasty vigour to
perfection. Having seen all that was left unchanged in this consecrated
mansion, I passed through a room, said to have been the bard’s bed-room,
and stepped into the garden, situated on a green slope, descending
directly from the house. It is now rather an orchard than a garden; a
spot of small extent, and without much else to recommend it, but that it
once was the property of Petrarch. It is not pretended to have retained
the form in which he left it. An agreeably wild and melancholy kind of
view, which it commands over the Euganean hills, and which I beheld under
the calm glow of approaching sunset, must often, at the same moment, have
soothed the poet’s anxious feelings, and hushed his active imagination,
as it did my own, into a delicious repose. Having lingered here till the
sun was sunk beneath the horizon, I was led a little way farther in the
village, to see Petrarch’s fountain. Hippocrene itself could not have
been more esteemed by the poet, than this, his gift, by all the
inhabitants of Arqua. The spring is copious, clear, and of excellent
water; I need not say with what relish I drank of it. The last religious
act in my little pilgrimage was a visit to the church-yard; where I
strewed a few flowers, the fairest of the season, on the poet’s tomb; and
departed for Padua by the light of the moon.