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and variety of invention; but he greatly surpassed both him and ali his poetical predecessors in propriety, exactness and elegance; then the music of his number is so melodious, that he is rather too soft and tender whenever he mentions his joyless love for his chaste friend. I think him effeminate in many places, but this is my particular opinion and the reader must take it as such. I will, however, not pass in silence a pretty curious anecdote regarding this poet. He was, as I said, so desperately fond of Laura, that he loved her even many years after her death. His tender verses had made such an impression on a pope of his time, that pitying the poor enamorato, he went so far as to offer him a dispensation of his vows (Petrarch had early embraced the ecclesiastic state) that he might marry her. But Petrarch magnanimously declined the offer and chose rather to suffer ali the distress in which his violent passion kept him, than put a stop to that vein of sweet poetr>’ which would have been drained, as he apprehended, had he got possession of the lady and would rather go on immortalizing both her name and his own by praising her charms, than make himself happy in the fruition of them. I will not examine here whether he was right or wrong in so doing, and without going further wide of my first aim, I here transcribe the first canzone that he writ on his Laura ’s death :
Che debb’io far? che mi consigli. Amore? Tem,po è ben di morire, ecc.
Petrarch is the last of our writers that studied the provenQal language, which was then at its lowest ebb, and fell in such neglect about his time, that none of Petrarch ’s successors seem to have thought of it any further. Such was the reputation he acquired, that since him the greatest part of the Italian wits adopted his language as the true language of the Muses.
Our poetry had, by this time, made a ver>’ considerable progn’ess. Petrarch ’s age had produced so many elegant poetical compositions that it deserved from successive ages to be called // buon secolo della lingua, the good century of the language; but our prose remained stili uncultivated, and we stili wanted
