I state the reason why I forbear approaching my lady. In the second, I relate what befalls me when I approach her. This second part is subdivided into five different subjects," &c.

Dante notices also, in his treatise on the "Vernacular Tongue," - De Vulgari Eloquio, - the minutest requirements of various forms of metrical composition. It is a great mistake to suppose, that, in proportion as a poet is inspired by nature, he cares nothing for the help of art. On the contrary, it may be asserted, that, the greater his inspiration, the greater is his respect for the means through which he is to convey it, the greater his study of language, of metre, of words.

Dante was as

great a critic for his time as he was a poet for all time. Spenser wrote a treatise on poetry, which is unfortunately lost; and Milton could have given a critical and musical reason for every verse which he uttered. To suppose the contrary, is to suppose that Beethoven and Paesiello were not as deep in the grammar of their art as professors who can do nothing but teach it; that Raphael could not have given a reason for every line which his knowledge of anatomy rendered true, or Titian for every color which he studied in cheek or landscape.

But

Now hear the great sonnet-minstrel, Petrarca, recording his experiments with his verses on his lute. first hear how they are introduced to us by his poetical critic, Foscolo. Cultivators of the sonnet are not to be daunted by them. The lute and the sonnet are no longer married, no longer even acquainted,

though,

on occasion, it is to be hoped they may be. It would be pleasant to hear a good animated sonnet chanted, or

otherwise musically impressed on us, by fervid accompaniments of lute or guitar.

*

"Little," says Foscolo, "as the Sonetti and Canzoni may appear to our modern composers of operas to be susceptible of music, it is not on that account the less true that these terms are derived from Suono and Canto, and that poets often added notes of music to their stanzas. In the manuscripts, which are still preserved at Florence, of Franco Sachetti and other contemporaries of Petrarch, the following note is to be found at the head of some of their sonnets: 'Intonatum per Francum : Scriptor dedit sonum.' The system of Italian music by counterpoint had been created three centuries before their age by Guido d' Arezzo; and it is only in our days that it has been refined and complicated by the followers of the German school. Poetry was not then in Italy the mere caput mortuum of music; and the human voice, instead of being a subordinate accessory to the orchestra, filled the most prominent part, and was accompanied by inanimate instruments only so far as was necessary to support it, and to regulate its modifications. The words might then strike the ear with less astonishment than the tunes, but they spoke more forcibly to the heart, and more usefully to the mind. Petrarch poured forth his

It may be thought strange to see an Italian writing the poet's name in this old English way, and an Englishman writing it like an Italian; but Foscolo's spelling was the polite concession of a guest to the country which he had made his home; and it is high time to follow the example of Roscoe and others in writing the word correctly. We no longer say Boccace instead of Boccaccio. Why should we deteriorate the name of his friend?

↑ "Sung or chanted by Franco; the writer gave the air." Franco was not Sacchetti, but a celebrated singer of the time.

verses to the sound of his lute, which he bequeathed in his will to a friend; and his voice was sweet, flexible, and of great compass. All the love-poetry of his predecessors, except that of Cino, wants sweetness of numbers; but the sweetness of Petrarch is enlivened with a variety, a rapidity, and a glow, which no Italian lyric has ever possessed in an equal degree."

And again, in a passage which must have seemed very remarkable to such readers as had been in the habit of considering a sonnet a trifle, Foscolo gives us the following "literal translation of a succession of memorandums" at the head of one of the sonnets that were thus "intoned" :

"I began this,' says Petrarch, 'by the impulse of the Lord-Domino jubente-10th September, at the dawn of day, after my morning prayers.'

"I must make these two verses over again, singing them - cantando; and I must transpose them.

o'clock, A. M., 19th October.'

3

"I like this-hoc placet. 30th October, 10 o'clock in the morning.'

"No: this does not please me. 20th December, in the evening.'

"And in the midst of his corrections," continues Foscolo, "he writes, on laying down his pen, 'I shall return to this again; I am called to supper.'

"February 18th. Towards noon.

This is now well :

however, look at it again vide tamen adhuc. "Sometimes he notes the town where he happens to be-1364, Veneris Mane, 19 Jan. dum invitus Patavii ferior! It might seem rather a curious than useful

# " 'Friday Morning. — While idling against my will in Padua.”

remark, that it was generally on Friday that he occupied himself with the painful labor of correction, did we not also know that it was to him a day of fast and penitence.* "When any thought occurred to him, he noted it in the midst of his verses, thus:

"Consider this.-I had some thoughts of transposing these lines, and of making the first verse the last, but I have not done so for the sake of harmony. The first would then be more sonorous, and the last less so, which is against rule; for the end should be more harmonious than the beginning.'

"Sometimes he says: "The commencement is good, but it is not pathetic enough.' In some places he suggests to himself to repeat the same words rather than the same ideas. In others he judges it better not to multiply the ideas, but to amplify them with other expressions. Every verse is turned in several different ways; above each phrase and each word he frequently places equivalent expressions, in order to examine them again; and it requires a profound knowledge of Italian to perceive, that, after such perplexing scruples, he always adopts those words which combine at once most harmony, elegance, and energy."+

Petrarca's lyric poems, which are chiefly sonnets to the amount of more than three hundred, were written during the course of thirty-two years; so that he had plenty of

* Did he call this "idling"? or was he speaking only of his stay in Padua altogether?

Ugo Foscolo, Essays on Petrarch, (1823,) p. 90 and p. 57. Foscolo was wrong, in common with all the world, in attributing the invention of counterpoint to Guittone d'Arezzo; as the reader may see in the Biographie Universelle des Musiciens by the most learned of musical critics, M. Fetis.

time before him, though he was otherwise an industrious writer and voluminous correspondent. But he would let

a sonnet lie polishing at leisure in his mind for months together, like a pebble on the sea-shore.

Cannot others, no less busy, have their sonnet polishing too? The cigar will not hinder it; and the doctor will not quarrel with it, as he does sometimes with the cigar.