[29] Madame Deshoulières speaks "avec connaissance de fait," and even points out the very spot in which Laura, "de l'amoureux Petrarque adoucit le martyre."--Another French lady, who piqued herself on being a descendant of the family of Laura, was extremely affronted and scandalised when the Chevalier Ramsay asserted that Petrarch's passion was purely poetical and platonic, and regarded it heresy to suppose that Laura could have been "_ungrateful_,"--such was her idea of feminine gratitude!--(Spence's Anecdotes.) Then comes another French woman, with the most anti-poetical soul that God ever placed within the form of a woman--"Le fade personage que votre Petrarque! que sa Laure était sotte et precieuse! que la Cour d'Amour était fastidieuse!" &c. exclaims the acute, amusing, profligate, heartless Madame du Deffand. It must be allowed that Petrarch and Laura would have been extremely desplaçes in the Court of the Regent,--the only Court of Love with which Madame du Deffand was acquainted, and which assuredly was not fastidieuse.
[30] From the Dialogues with St. Augustin, as quoted in the "Pieces Justificatives," and by Ginguené (Hist. Litt. vol. iii. notes.) These imaginary dialogues are a series of Confessions not intended for publication by Petrarch, but now printed with his prose works.
[31] Sonnet 39.
[32] Ballata 5.
[33] Petrarch withdrew to Vaucluse in 1337, and spent three years in entire solitude. He commenced his journey to Rome in 1341, about fourteen years after his first interview with Laura.
[34] Petrarch asks her whether it was "pain to die?" she replies in those fine lines which have been quoted a thousand times:
La Morte è fin d' una prigion oscura Agli animi gentili; agli altri è noia, Ch' hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura.
[35] Ma non si ruppe almen ogni vel quando Sola i tuoi detti, te presente accolsi "_Dir più non osa il nostro amor_," cantando.
(The song here alluded to is not preserved in Petrarch's works, and the expression "_il nostro amore_," is very remarkable.)
[36] This sounds at first pedantic; but it must be remembered that at this very time Petrarch was studying Seneca, and writing a Latin poem on the history of Scipio: thus the ideas were fresh in his mind.
[37] The hypothesis I have assumed relative to Laura's character, her married state, and the authenticity of the MS. note in the Virgil, have not been lightly adopted, but from deep conviction and patient examination: but this is not the place to set arguments and authorities in array--Ginguené and Gibbon against Lord Byron and Fraser Tytler. I am surprised at the ground Lord Byron has taken on the question. As for his characteristic sneer on the assertion of M. de Bastie, who had said truly and beautifully--"qu'il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des impressions que la mort n'efface pas," I disdain, in my feminine character, to reply to it; I will therefore borrow the eloquence of a more powerful pen:--"The love of a man like Petrarch, would have been less in character, if it had been less ideal. For the purposes of inspiration, a single interview was quite sufficient. The smile which sank into his heart the first time he ever beheld Laura, played round her lips ever after: the look with which her eyes first met his, never passed away. The image of his mistress still haunted his mind, and was recalled by every object in nature. Even death could not dissolve the fine illusion; for that which exists in the imagination is alone imperishable. As our feelings become more ideal, the impression of the moment indeed becomes less violent; but the effect is more general and permanent. The blow is felt only by reflection; it is the rebound that is fatal. We are not here standing up for this kind of Platonic attachment, but only endeavouring to explain the way in which the passions very commonly operate in minds accustomed to draw their strongest interests from constant contemplation."--_Edinburgh Review._
Her haunts of ease And easy contemplation;--gay parterres And labyrinthine walks; her sunny glades And shady groves for recreation framed."
And such a haunted pleasure-ground of beautiful recollections, would I wish my subject to be to myself and to my readers; where we shall be priviledged to wander at will; to pause or turn back; to deviate to this side or to that, as memory may prompt, or imagination lead, or illustration require.
Dante and his Beatrice are best exhibited in contrast to Petrarch and Laura. Petrarch was in his youth an amiable and accomplished courtier, whose ambition was to cultivate the arts, and please the fair. Dante early plunged into the factions which distracted his native city, was of a stern commanding temper, mingling study with action. Petrarch loved with all the vivacity of his temper; he took a pleasure in publishing, in exaggerating, in embellishing his passion in the eyes of the world. Dante, capable of strong and enthusiastic tenderness, and early concentrating all the affections of his heart on one object, sought no sympathy; and solemnly tells us of himself,--in contradistinction to those poets of his time who wrote of love from fashion or fancy, not from feeling,--that he wrote as love inspired, and as his heart dictated.
"Io mi son un che, quando Amore spira, noto, ed in quel modo Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando."
PURGATORIO, c. 24.
A coquette would have triumphed in such a captive as Petrarch; and in truth, Laura seems to have "sounded him from the top to the bottom of his compass:"--a tender and impassioned woman would repose on such a heart as Dante's, even as his Beatrice did. Petrarch had a gay and captivating exterior; his complexion was fair, with sparkling blue eyes and a ready smile. He is very amusing on the subject of his own coxcombry, and tells us how cautiously he used to turn the corner of a street, lest the wind should disorder the elaborate curls of his fine hair! Dante, too, was in his youth eminently handsome, but in a style of beauty which was characteristic of his mind: his eyes, were large and intensely black, his nose aquiline, his complexion of a dark olive, his hair and beard very much curled, his step slow and measured, and the habitual expression of his countenance grave, with a tinge of melancholy abstraction. When Petrarch walked along the streets of Avignon, the women smiled, and said, "there goes the lover of Laura!" The impression which Dante left on those who beheld him, was far different. In allusion to his own personal appearance, he used to relate an incident that once occurred to him. When years of persecution and exile had added to the natural sternness of his countenance, the deep lines left by grief, and the brooding spirit of vengeance, he happened to be at Verona, where since the publication of the Inferno, he was well known. Passing one day by a portico, where several women were seated, one of them whispered, with a look of awe,--"Do you see that man? that is he who goes down to hell whenever he pleases, and brings us back tidings of the sinners below!" "Ay, indeed!" replied her companion,--"very likely; see how his face is scarred with fire and brimstone, and blackened with smoke, and how his hair and beard have been singed and curled in the flames!"
Dante had not, however, this forbidding appearance when he won the young heart of Beatrice Portinari. They first met at a banquet given by her father, Folco de' Portinari, when Dante was only nine years old, and Beatrice a year younger. His childish attachment, as he tells us himself, commenced from that hour; it became a passion, which increased with his years, and did not perish even with its object.
Beatrice has not fared better at the hands of commentators than Laura. Laura, with her golden hair scattered to the winds, "i capei d'oro al aura sporsi," her soft smiles, and her angel-like deportment, was to be Repentance; and the more majestic Beatrice, in whose eyes dwelt love,
but not golden,--an epithet I do not find once applied to it: she had an ample forehead, "spaciosa fronte," a mouth that when it smiled surpassed all things in sweetness; so that her Poet would give the universe to hear it pronounce a kind "yes."
Mira che quando ride Passa ben di dolcezza ogni altra cosa. Così di quella bocca il pensier mio Mi sprona, perchè io Non ho nel mondo cosa che non desse A tal ch'un si, con buon voler dicesse.
Her neck was white and slender, springing gracefully from the bust--
Poi guarda la sua svelta e bianca gola Commessa ben dalle spalle e dal petto.
