United States or Bahrain ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With beseeching eyes Ann would repeat to her best beloved, as they sat together in the oriel bay, how that Laura had led her Petrarca from the ways of common men; and it went to my heart to hear her entreat him, with timid and yet fond and heartfelt prayer, to grant to her to be his Laura and to guide him far from the beaten path, forasmuch as it was narrow and low for his winged spirit.
After this great captain met with his sad reverses, and, deprived of all his possessions, fled from Rome, an attendant asked him, "What fortress have you now?" He placed his hand on his heart and answered, "Eccola!" The same blood evidently ran in the veins of both these men; and well might Petrarca call Colonna "a phoenix risen from the ashes of the ancient Romans."
He had a special admiration for Dante, delighting in the admirable genius of that man, almost all of whose works he knew by heart; he held Petrarca in no less esteem. He not only delighted in reading, but occasionally in composing, too, as may be seen by some sonnets that are to be found of his. Concerning some of them, there have been published—"Lectures and Criticisms by Varchi."
For what subject of all subjects possible was there that made so powerful an appeal to my inclinations? Within an hour he had the ode not perhaps such a poem as might stand comparison with the verses of Messer Petrarca, yet a very passable effusion, chaste of conceit and palpitating with sincerity and adoration.
We reached Petrarch's house before the custodian had arrived to admit us, and stood before the high stone wall which shuts in the front of the house, and quite hides it from those without. This wall bears the inscription, Casa Petrarca, and a marble tablet lettered to the following effect:
"In the course of the afternoon I discovered the name and residence of the young man, with whom I had determined to have an interview. His name was Francesco Petrarca, an Italian by birth, and now engaged in pursuing his studies in this place. I called upon him at his lodgings, and, fortunately, found him at home.
The three remaining men of the company are of little interest save one, whose name was to be well known nay, was well known already, though not to one who had lived in such seclusion as mine. This was that fine poet Annibale Caro, whom I have heard judged to be all but the equal of the great Petrarca himself. A man who had less the air of a poet it would not be easy to conceive.
This has been exemplified in our own day in Bembo, in Sanazzaro, in Caro, in Guidoccione, in the Marchioness of Pescara, and in other writers and lovers of the Tuscan rhyme, who, although gifted with the highest and most singular genius, none the less, not being able of themselves to do better than nature exemplifies in Petrarca, they set themselves to follow him, but so happily that they are judged worthy to be read and counted with the best.
Petrarca is, in my mind, a sing-song, love-sick poet; much admired, however, by the Italians: but an Italian who should think no better of him than I do, would certainly say that he deserved his 'Laura' better than his 'Lauro'; and that wretched quibble would be reckoned an excellent piece of Italian wit.
To appreciate precisely what humanism means to understand the dominant intellectual interests of the educated people of the sixteenth century it will be necessary first to turn back some two hundred years earlier and say a few words about the first great humanist, Francesco Petrarca, or, as he is known to us, Petrarch.
Word Of The Day