[23] In a private letter of Petrarch to the Bishop of Lombes, occurs the following passage--(the Bishop, it appears, had rallied him on the subject of his attachment.) "Would to God that my Laura were indeed but an imaginary person, and my passion for her but sport!--Alas! it is rather a madness!--hard would it have been, and painful, to feign so long a time--and what extravagance to play such a farce in the world! No! we may counterfeit the action and voice of a sick man, but not the paleness and wasted looks of the sufferer; and how often have you witnessed both in me!"--SADE, vol. i. p. 281. [24] Quoted by Foscolo. [25] Canz. xv. Son. 10. [26] See Son. 37, 38, &c. [27] Foscolo remarks the restless spirit which all his life drove Petrarch, like a perturbed spirit, from one residence to another. [28] Here Petrarch seems to have forgotten himself; he was not _always_ immaculate. CHAPTER VII. LAURA AND PETRARCH CONTINUED. Much power of lively ridicule, much coarse wit,--principally French wit,--has been expended on the subject of Laura's virtue; by those, I presume, who under similar circumstances would have found such virtue "too painful an endeavour."[29] Much depraved ingenuity has been exerted to twist certain lines and passages in the Canzonière into a sense which shall blot with frailty the memory of this beautiful and far-famed being: once believe these interpretations, and all the peculiar and graceful charm which now hangs round her intercourse with Petrarch vanishes,--the reverential delicacy of the poet's homage becomes a mockery, and all his exalted praises of her unequalled virtue, and her invincible chastity, are turned to satire, and insult our moral feeling. But the question, I believe, is finally set at rest, and it were idle to war with epigrams. All the evidence that has been collected, external and internal, prose and poetry, critical and traditional, tends to prove, first, that Laura preserved her virtue to the last; and, secondly, that she did not preserve it unassailed; that Petrarch, true to his sex,--a very man, (as Laura has been called a _very woman_,) used at first every art, every effort, every advantage, which his diversified accomplishments of mind and person lent him, to destroy the very virtue he adored. He only _hints_ this in his poetry, just sufficiently to enhance the glory which he has thrown round his divinity; but he speaks more plainly in prose. "Untouched by my prayers, unvanquished by my arguments, unmoved by my flattery, she remained faithful to her sex's honour; she resisted her own young heart, and mine, and a thousand, thousand, thousand things, which must have conquered any other. She remained unshaken. A woman taught me the duty of a man! to persuade me to keep the path of virtue, her conduct was at once an example and a reproach; and when she beheld me break through all bounds, and rush blindly to the precipice, she had the courage to abandon me, rather than follow me."[30]