CAMPBELL'S LIFE OF PETRARCH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

MR. URBAN,

Cork, August 19, 1841.

The ensuing cursory observations, prompted by some articles in your number for this month, will, F trust, experience your customary indulgence. The first presents an admirable digest and ingenious critique of Mr. Campbell's Life of Petrarch, to which the accomplished biographer will find it much his interest and advantage to recur, should, as may be expected, further impressions of his volumes be called for. And yet, it is almost doubtful, whether to many readers such a compendium, like those of Justin and Xiphilinus, or the more ancient ones of Manetho, Sanchoniatho, and others, may not supersede the use of the original work, and serve as a substitute, in place of inviting a demand, for it. This was, in a great degree, the effect of Abbé Roman's abridgement of De Sade's compilation, which certainly, though, as remarked by Gibbon, (chap. 66 and 70,) it embraced rather the history of the age than of the individual, was still too enlarged for its subject, and obviously required compression. Thus reduced and retrenched, it appeared at Toulouse in 1804.

Like the parents of Galileo and Pascal, but, in more direct analogy, as to a poet, like Ovid's father, Petrarch's used every exertion of authority, every artifice of seduction and means of persuasion, to bend his son's mind to the pursuit of law. This conflict with nature, however, proved ineffectual, and Petrarch devoted himself to poetry, in which his superiority was at once recognised, and the Laurel Crown, or Laureat's distinction, was offered to him. Still, to prove that he had not neglected the general intellectual studies of the period, and that he was further qualified by the union of science with the charm of verse, for the high situation, he proceeded to Naples, where then, in 1341, reigned Robert of Anjou, and with the approval of that monarch, no incompetent judge, proclaimed his readiness to answer, during three days, every question that should be put to him, in history, literature, and philosophy. This rigorous trial in its successful issue correspondingly established his accredited capacity, and spread his fame. On Easter-Sunday, accordingly, of that year, (or, the 8th of April,) he ascended the Roman Capitol, and received the object of his ambition, the laurel crown, which he deposited in the Church of St. Peter, and immediately returned to Avignon, then the papal residence, as well as his own.

But, as it is not my design to engage in Petrarch's general biography, and that I only intend to offer a few observations on, or additions to, the review in this Magazine above adverted to, of Mr. Campbell's publication, I proceed to remark, that at page 117, (note) Petrarch's hair, it is stated, was grey, and his appearance venerable, when only twenty-five; but,

according to his very early biographers, Villani and Beccatello, he was then merely beginning to be grey"Cominiciò di 25 anni ad esser canuto," for which his own authority, as in the review, (De Rebus Senilibus, lib. v. Epist, 3,) is quoted; and it is added, that he felt it necessary to be bled twice a-year, in the spring and autumn-"due volte l'anno, cioè di primavera e d'autunno, si traeva sangue," thus affirming Mr. Campbell's character of his complexion. In respect, however, to one of the results of this temperament, on which the reviewer specially dwells, (page 121,) it were only fair to remark, that Petrarch never received priestly ordination, or had the cure of souls. The benefices conferred on him were the retributions of private friendship or public admiration; but he uniformly declined those that involved, in their exercise, the pastoral functions. The gifts of Pope Urban the Fifth were, accordingly, accepted-"purchè non fossero beneficj curati; de' quali nessuno voleva, parendogli assai il render conto a Dio benedetto dell' anima sua, non che di quelle d'altri,”—a scrupulous consideration truly; but the possession of the fruits, without the investiture or duties, of the priesthood, is to be found in other communities besides that of Rome-witness the late Duke of York, who, as I have had frequent occasion to note, was named Bishop of Osnabruck in his cradle.

This princely see was alternately possessed by a Catholic and Protestant, according to the compromise of the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. Some of the rich chapters, I may be indulged in parenthetically adding, were also, at the Reformation, maintained, as provision for the younger children of the sovereigns

of the state. To be admitted into these holy precincts, after, as well as before, the religious change, the most unsullied transmission of race was indispensable. No elevation of rank could redeem a defeasance of blood, or efface an intervenient blot on a noble escutcheon. So rigid was the guardianship of the sacred deposit, and so uncompromising the exclusion of plebeian impurity from admixture or contact, that in some chapters, the descendants of the Emperor, the First Maximilian, had any progeny existed by his second wife, Bianca, daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, natural son of Giacomo, the low-born founder of the puissant house of Sforza, would not have been received. Not so much, be it noted, in disparagement of the spurious birth of Galeazzo, as the ignoble origin of his father-one of the most celebrated characters of his age. It is, moreover, dubious whether the collateral taint would not have extended its proscriptive influence to the offspring of Maximilian by his first wife, Mary of Burgundy, and thus interdicted the issue of the Emperors Charles V., and Ferdinand I., the acknowledged heads of Christendom, from those abodes of pride, which set at nought the characteristic inculcation of Christian institution, humility, and displayed the symbol of redemption, in mockery of the example and precepts of the Redeemer. (See Bignon, Histoire de France, tome ix., 93.) Nor was this horror of plebeian pollution less inveterate in civil life; for even marriage, though consecrated with every required solemnity, failed to equalise the position or rights of the originally discordant parties, whom an impassable chasm severed, as in the castes of India; or, the

European and African generations in the ever vaunted free and liberal States of America; and an inferior alliance, or, as it is designated, a morganitic union, thus spreading its darkening shade over remote posterity, operating, too, with full effect in female origin or transit generally absorbed in the male, not only entailed a corruption of blood, in prejudiced feelings, but a legal forfeiture of inheritance. The dominions of the House of Burgundy were the dower of Maximilian's first spouse, and the enormous sum of four hundred and forty thousand crowns of gold, far surpassing a million of our present currency, that of Bianca Sforza. (See Gent. Mag. for July, 1839, page 36.) of the levelling faculty of wealth, exemplified in this union, a more recent instance may be adduced in that of the near kinsman of our own Sovereign, her mother's brother and her husband's uncle, George Frederick Augustus of Saxe Cobourg, with the heiress of the Hungarian house of Von-Kohary, whose origin appears to be, in no degree, of superior illustration to that of the plebeian-descended Empress, but who, more fortunate than the childless wife of Maximilian, proudly contemplates the exalted fortunes of her own offspring, in the King-consort of Portugal, the daughter-in-law of the French Monarch, and possibly, other future august alliances.

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But, resuming my direct subject, I have to state, that after the first ebullitions of youth, though still"molto stimolato dalla carne, et cum adhuc satis haberet caloris et virium," as he writes himself, (Senil. lib. viii. Ep. 1,) Petrarch became undeviatingly virtuous, "visse castissimo."

At page 121, (note) it is said" Bayle avoit raison