t

chanting estimate of Petrarch's poetry is still fresh in your mind, my first specimen shall be a sonnet of his which Warton cites to vindicate his censure of the poet's style, and in which, he says, Petrarch exhibits 'the perplexities of a lover's mind and his struggles betwixt hope and despair, a subject most fertile of sentimental complaints, by a combination of contrarieties, a species of wit highly valued by the Italians.' I must admit that the specimen is in Petrarch's worst style, being so incrusted with conceits as to leave only here and there an atom of genuine poesy visible. Such as it is, however, it is interesting, as being a literal translation made by one of the earliest English sonnet-writers, Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, who entitles it a 'Description of the Contrarious Passions in a Lover.' Relieved of its antiquated orthography, Wyatt's version is as follows:

"I find no peace, and all my war is done:*

I fear and hope, I burn and freeze likewise:

I fly aloft, and yet cannot arise;

And nought I have, and all the world I seize on,

That locks nor loseth, holdeth me in prison,
And holds me not, yet can I 'scape no wise:
Nor lets me live, nor die, at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eye I see; without tongue I plain :
I wish to perish, yet I ask for health;

I love another, and I hate myself;

I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.
Lo, thus displeaseth me both death and life,
And my delight is causer of this strife.'"

"Well, Professor, notwithstanding my warm side for Petrarch, caused by Warton's animadversions, I confess this specimen has cooled my ardor. It has very slight merit, either as

Spenser's "Visions of Petrarch."

23

prose or poetry. In all frankness, I think I could do as well myself."

"I should be sorry if you could not," he replied, “for it is indeed sad stuff. Warton was not far astray when he drew the following ironical synoptical outline of the wretched original of this still more wretched translation: 'I am neither at peace nor war. I burn, and I freeze. I soar to heaven, and yet grovel on the earth. I can hold nothing, and yet grasp everything. My prison is neither shut, nor is it opened. I see without eyes, and I complain without a voice. I laugh, and I weep. I live, and am dead,' etc. Nevertheless, it would be most unjust to Petrarch to judge him by this sonnet. Here is another specimen, more worthy of his great reputation, the translation being the work of a very different hand—no less a one than that of Edmund Spenser, whose transcendent genius, it is no dispraise to the Tuscan poet to say, ennobled whatever it touched. The selection is a portion of 'The Visions of Petrarch,' seven in number, and treated in as many separate sonnets: the first being a vision of a fair hind chased by two cruel dogs, who overtake and rend her to pieces; the second, of a stately and richly freighted ship, while sailing gallantly on a propitious sea, arrested by a sudden tempest, and driven to destruction upon a rock; the third, of a beautiful laurel-tree, standing in the midst of a delightful wood, and its branches vocal with the 'sundrie melodie' of birds, shattered and blasted by lightning; the fourth, of a fountain springing from a rock, and sounding sweetly on its way, swallowed up by the treacherous gaping earth; the fifth, of a phoenix, with purple wings and golden crest, so dismayed by the sight of the 'tree destroied' and 'water dride' that he smote himself to death with his beak; the sixth and seventh conclude the vision, thus:

"At last so faire a Ladie did I spie,

That thinking yet on her I burne and quake;
On hearbs and flowres she walked pensively,
Milde, but yet love she proudly did forsake:
White seem'd her robes, yet woven so they were,
As snow and golde together had been wrought:
Above the wast a darke clowde shrouded her,
A stinging serpent by the heele her caught;
Wherewith she languisht as the gathered floure;
And, well assur'd, she mounted up to joy.
Alas, on earth so nothing doth endure,

But bitter griefe and sorrowfull annoy:

Which makes this life wretched and miserable,
Tosséd with stormes of fortune variable.

"When I beheld this tickel trustles state
Of vaine world's glorie, flitting too and fro,
And mortal men tossed by troublous fate
In restles seas of wretchedness and woe;
I wish I might this wearie life forgoe,
And shortly turne unto my happie rest,
Where my free spirite might not anie moe
Be vext with sights, that doo her peace molest.
And ye, faire Ladie, in whose bounteous breast
All heavenly grace and virtue shrined is,
When ye these rythmes doo read, and vew the rest,
Loath this base world, and thinke of heavens blis:

And though ye be the fairest of God's creatures,

Yet thinke, that Death shall spoyle your goodly features.””

"That is better, decidedly better. Yes, I call that poetry. Why, it stands to reason that that must be the genuine article which Edmund Spenser thought worth the labor of translating into his native tongue for the entertainment of his countrymen. Professor, the Tuscan is reinstated in my favor, and I have a warm side for him again.”

Origin of English Sonnet.

25

"Ah! laddie, prejudice and prepossession are great convincers. The great name of Spenser has had an enlightening influence upon your judgment, I see. Confess now, that if I had withheld that honored name your conversion would have been more difficult."

Anything to afford you gratification, my dear old moralizer. Yes, I frankly confess it was the strong calcium light of Spenser's genius, directed upon Petrarch's verse, that made its beauties visible to me. And now, to change the subject a little, do you not think we have had enough talk about these Italian fellows, and that it is nearly time to inquire how your 'diamond of literature' fared among their English-speaking contemporaries ?"

"Evidently, my enterprising young friend, you are oblivious. of the fact that the sonnet was not cultivated by any of the English contemporaries either of Dante or Petrarch, and had no existence in England until a much later day. Dante was born in 1265, and died in 1321, about seven years before the birth of Chaucer. Petrarch was born in 1304, and died in 1374; while Chaucer is thought by some to have been born in 1328, and is known to have died in 1400. Chaucer was, therefore, contemporaneous with Petrarch for about forty-six years; and yet he did not write a single sonnet, though he drew largely in several of his poems from his Italian contemporary, and exhibits a minute familiarity with his poetical and other writings. The omission is the more remarkable from the fact that Chaucer visited Petrarch at Padua, as we learn from Chaucer himself in his Prologue to 'The Clerkes Tale,' where he says"I wol you tell a tale, which that I Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk, As preved by his wordes and his werk.

He is now ded, and nailed in his cheste,
I pray to God so yeve his soule reste.
Fraunceis Petrark, the laureat poete,

Highte this clerk, whos rethorike swete
Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie.'"

"Besides Chaucer's own testimony to this interesting incident in the lives of the two poets, there is a treasured though shadowy tradition that Chaucer, among a train of other English and Italian notables, was present with Petrarch at the marriage of Violante, daughter of the Duke of Milan, to Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Yet, notwithstanding the probable meeting of the poets, and the more certain familiarity of the youthful English poet with the writings of his Italian senior, Chaucer utterly abstained from the peculiar poetical form of verse in which Petrarch achieved his greatest renown. When I say this, I am not unmindful that here and there, as I intimated when speaking of the claim of the Provençal poets to the invention of the sonnet, by coupling two consecutive stanzas of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Creseide,' many portions of that poem (and indeed of other poems of his in the seven-line stanza) may be made to bear a strong resemblance in form to the old Provençal sonnet. The stanzas are of the same construction, both as respects the rhyme and the number and length of the verses, as those used by the King of Navarre and the Provençal Rimers, which have been unhesitatingly classed as sonnets by critics who attribute the origin of the sonnet to the Provençals. In the verse of the Provençals and of 'Troilus and Creseide' the stanzas consist of seven verses of ten or eleven syllables, the only difference between them being that the last two verses form a distinct couplet in Chaucer's stanza, and in the Provençal are made to rhyme with the first