It appears to me that the very impression of Petrarch's individual character, and the circumstances of his life, on the whole mass of his poetry, are evidence of the truth of his attachment, and the reality of its object. He was by nature a poet; his love was, therefore, poetical: he loved "in numbers, for the numbers came." He was an accomplished scholar in a pedantic age,--and his love is, therefore, illustrated by such comparisons and turns of thought as were allied to his habitual studies. He had a fertile and playful fancy, and his love is adorned by all the luxuriance of his imagination. He had been educated for the profession of the Civil Law, "per vender parole anzi mensogne,"--to sell words and lies, as he disdainfully expressed it,--and his love is mixed up with subtile reasonings on his own hapless state. He was a philosopher, and it is tinged with the mystic reveries of Platonism, the favourite and fashionable philosophy of the age. He was deeply religious, and the strain of devotional and moral feeling which mingles with that of passion, or of grief,--his fears lest the excess of his earthly affections should interfere with his eternal salvation,--his continual allusions to his faith, to a future existence, and the nothingness and vanity of the world,--are not so many proofs of his profaneness, but of his sincerity. He was suspicious, irritable, and susceptible; subject to quick transitions of feeling; raised by a word to hope--plunged by a glance into despair; just such a finely-toned instrument as a woman loves to play on;--and all this we have set forth in the contradictions, the self-reproaches, the little daily vicissitudes which are events and revolutions in a life of passion; a life, which when exhibited in the rich and softening tints of poetry, has all the power of strong interest, united to the charm of harmony and expression; but in the reality, and in plain prose, cannot be contemplated without a painful compassion. "The day may perhaps come," says Petrarch in one of his familiar letters,[24] "when I shall have calmness enough to contemplate all the misery of my soul, to examine my passion, not however, that I may continue to love her--but that I may love thee alone, O my God! But at this day, how many obstacles have I yet to surmount, how many efforts have I yet to make! I no longer love as I did love, but still I love; I love in spite of myself--in lamentations and in tears. I will hate her--No!--I must still love her!" Seven years afterwards he writes,--"my love is extreme, but it is exclusive and virtuous--virtuous!--no!--this disquietude, these suspicions, these transports, this watchfulness, this utter weariness of every thing, are not signs of a virtuous love!" What a picture of an impassioned and distracted heart! * * * * *