PETRARCH. -(1304-1374.)

Vaucluse, to use Petrarch's own expression, is the Transalpine Parnassus " of the poet ; and the recollection of him is still as vivid in the ancient "county" of Avignon as in his native Tuscany. He was born at Arezzo, which, small as it is, has given birth to so many men of genius, on the 20th of July, 1304, and he came into the world at a time when his country was torn by faction, and when several of her most illustrious children were in exile. His father, who held the appointment of Notary in the Florentine Rolls Court, was a friend of Dante, and, proscribed like the latter, took refuge at Pisa, where he sent his son to study at the University. The death of Henry VIL, which put an end to the last hopes of the exiles and inspired Dante with so splendid a canzone, led to the final exile of Petrarch's father, who took up his residence at Avignon with the Papal Court of Clement V.

While the University of Montpellier was already celebrated, the south could boast at that time of those Courts of Love at which the Provencal poets met in friendly rivalry. Petrarch's father looked upon the study of law as the surest road to fortune for his son, and it is said that finding him on one occasion absorbed in Cicero, he took the book and cast it into the fire. Those who are predestined to be famous in letters are not, however, to be thus deterred, and Petrarch drank so deeply of the ancient writers that in his " Triumph of Fame " he calls Virgil, Cicero, and Seneca " the eyes of our language" .

A brief sketch of his life will not come amiss before explaining by what strands he is connected with the genius of Florence, and fixing-, his place in the history of her literature : below Dante and above Boccaccio. His father, adhering to his resolve to make a lawyer of him, sent him from Montpellier, where he had spent four years, to the University of Bologna ; here he studied first under Giacomo Andrea, and then under Cino da Pistoia. He was left an orphan at twenty, and his fortune having been squandered by his executors, he was obliged to return to Avignon, where he then gave himself up to his favorite studies.

He was twenty-three when he made the acquaintance of Colonna, Bishop of Lombez, whose affection for him exercised a very great influence upon the whole of his future career ; and it is at this period, too, that began to dawn the passion which directed the course of his whole life, and inspired him with the sonnets by which he is known to us. Petrarch remains for posterity " the lover of Laura," and the fountain of Vaucluse has become the shrine of this affection, not less touching and ill-starred than that inspired by Beatrice, but more real and more vivid. It was under the influence of this stormy passion that Petrarch made his way through the south of France to Paris, Flanders, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, exhaling in all directions his amorous burden, like a bird stricken by a dart; and scattering his verses by the wayside.

Petrarch, however, was a citizen of the world, and he was of too practical a turn of mind to isolate himself in the ethereal Platonism which animates some of his writings. Pope John XXII. was intent upon restoring Rome to the Holy See, and Petrarch, inflamed by the idea of a fresh crusade, wrote the ode to the Bishop of Lombez which begins with the splendid invocation, "O aspettata in ciel," and in 1335 he wrote some magnificent Latin verses on the same subject to Pope Benedict XII.

But the image of Laura still haunted him, and he could not bring himself to settle anywhere. Colonna, having become a cardinal, induced him to come to Rome, but he soon returned to Avignon, and went to reside in solitude at Vaucluse, leading a life of asceticism, and devoting himself wholly to the ideal figure of her upon whom all his thoughts were fixed. It was there that he wrote those sonnets and odes, which soon made him famous throughout Italy, and worthy to be compared with Dante himself.

In 1340 his name had become so celebrated that the Roman Senate invited 'him to return to that city and receive the honors of the Capitol, while the Chancellor of the University of Paris, which at that time enjoyed a world-wide celebrity, offered him similar honors on the banks of the Seine.

Petrarch repaired to Italy, first visiting Naples, where Robert of Anjou, a friend of literature, was surrounded by a Court composed of poets and men of learning. It was at Naples that he became intimate with Boccaccio, to whom he addressed such touching letters instinct with friendliness. Upon the 8th of April, 1341, he went up to the Capitol, twelve young Roman princes preceding him and reciting finest of his nest compositions. Having reached the altar, he received the laurel wreath and the garlands of flowers woven by patrician hands. When he had received them, he laid them with reverence upon the altar, as much as to intimate that he owed his success to Divine favor, and after the ceremony was over he returned to Avignon, without casting one look behind.

The year following, as the Romans had commissioned him to make known their wishes to the Holy Father, Clement VI. appointed him Prior of Migliarino, in the diocese of Pisa, and he intrusted him with a mission at once confidential and perilous, to Naples, where the Holy Father claimed the regency. But the Princess Joan, a granddaughter of King Robert, who has left behind her a very bad reputation, would not listen to his representations, and he returned to Avignon, after a brief stay at Parma. He was, in his retreat, still accessible to the influence of generous ideas, and when Rienzi endeavored to restore the republic at Rome, Petrarch sent him his congratulations, and did not allow even the assassination of Cardinal Colonna to estrange him. But the phantom of a restored republic faded away with the death of Rienzi ; and it was just about the same time that Laura was stricken down by the plague of 1348, which Boccaccio has depicted in such sinister colors.