Miss Edgeworth’s lines express her estimation of the gem she has the
happiness to own. That lady allowed a few casts from it in bronze, and a
gentleman who possesses one, and who favours the “_Table Book_” with his
approbation, permits its use for a frontispiece to this volume. The
engraving will not be questioned as a decoration, and it has some claim
to be regarded as an elegant illustration of a miscellany which draws
largely on art and literature, and on nature itself, towards its supply.
“I delight,” says Petrarch, “in my pictures. I take great pleasure also
in images; they come in show more near unto nature than pictures, for
they do but appear; but these are felt to be substantial, and their
bodies are more durable. Amongst the Grecians the art of painting was
esteemed above all handycrafts, and the chief of all the liberal arts.
How great the dignity hath been of statues; and how fervently the study
and desire of men have reposed in such pleasures, emperors and kings,
and other noble personages, nay, even persons of inferior degree, have
shown, in their industrious keeping of them when obtained.” Insisting on
the golden mean, as a rule of happiness, he says, “I possess an amazing
collection of books, for attaining this, and every virtue: great is my
delight in beholding such a treasure.” He slights persons who collect
books “for the pleasure of boasting they have them; who furnish their
chambers with what was invented to furnish their minds; and use them no
otherwise than they do their Corinthian tables, or their painted tables
and images, to look at.” He contemns others who esteem not the true
value of books, but the price at which they may sell them--“a new
practice” (observe it is Petrarch that speaks) “crept in among the rich,
whereby they may attain one art more of unruly desire.” He repeats, with
rivetting force, “I have great plenty of books: where such scarcity has
been lamented, this is no small possession: I have an inestimable many
of books!” He was a diligent collector, and a liberal imparter of these
treasures. He corresponded with Richard de Bury, an illustrious prelate
of our own country, eminent for his love of learning and learned men,
and sent many precious volumes to England to enrich the bishop’s
magnificent library. He vividly remarks, “I delight passionately in my
books;” and yet he who had accumulated them largely, estimated them
rightly: he has a saying of books worthy of himself--“a wise man seeketh
not quantity but sufficiency.”
Petrarch loved the quiet scenes of nature, and these can scarcely be
observed from a carriage or while riding, and are never enjoyed but on
foot; and to me--on whom that discovery was imposed, and who am
sometimes restrained from country walks, by necessity--it was no small
pleasure, when I read a passage in his “View of Human Nature,” which
persuaded me of his fondness for the exercise: “A journey on foot hath
most pleasant commodities; a man may go at his pleasure; none shall stay
him, none shall carry him beyond his wish; none shall trouble him; he
hath but one labour, the labour of nature--to go.”
In “The Indicator” there is a paper of peculiar beauty, by Mr. Leigh
Hunt, “on receiving a sprig of myrtle from Vaucluse,” with a paragraph
suitable to this occasion: “We are supposing that all our readers are
acquainted with Petrarch. Many of them doubtless know him intimately.
Should any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak of
him in the gross? We should say, that he was one of the finest gentlemen
and greatest scholars that ever lived; that he was a writer who
flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century, at the time when Chaucer
was young, during the reigns of our Edwards; that he was the greatest
light of his age; that although so fine a writer himself, and the author
of a multitude of works, or rather because he was both, he took the
greatest pains to revive the knowledge of the ancient learning,
recommending it every where, and copying out large manuscripts with his
own hand; that two great cities, Paris and Rome, contended which should
have the honour of crowning him; that he was crowned publicly, in the
metropolis of the world, with laurel and with myrtle; that he was the
friend of Boccaccio the father of Italian prose; and lastly, that his
greatest renown nevertheless, as well as the predominant feelings of his
existence, arose from the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the
far-famed Laura, whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on
a Good Friday; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets,
which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all after
lovers; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 1348, on
the same day and hour on which he first beheld her. Who she was, or why
their connection was not closer, remains a mystery. But that she was a
real person, and that in spite of all her modesty she did not show an
insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted
imagination, from his own repeated accounts, from all that he wrote,
uttered, and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give the whole
civilized world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the abundant riches to
be found in one single idea, and of the going out of a man’s self to
dwell in the soul and happiness of another, which has served to refine
the passion for all modern times; and perhaps will do so, as long as
love renews the world.”
At Vaucluse, or Valchiusa, “a remarkable spot in the old poetical region
of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows
surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue,”
Petrarch resided for several years, and composed in it the greater part
of his poems.