"Petrarch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been the theological side, if one may so express it, of Cicero's religion, the moral aphorisms which meet us here and there in his works have often in them a teaching which comes near the tone of Christian ethics. The words of Petrarch are hardly too strong—"You would fancy sometimes it was not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle who was speaking".[1] These are but a few out of many which might be quoted: "Strive ever for the truth, and so reckon as ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... The music and tableaux in this booth were worthy of the immense audience which crowded the space each night. The Italian poets and authors were represented here and it was not at all unusual for Dante, Michael Angelo, Petrarch and Boccaccio to hobnob over a glass of lemonade with a sprightly fairy from the Jacob Grimm booth or some other personage diametrically opposite in legend and dress. The matinees during the week were prepared in many ways for ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... selected from modern oratory—that of Burke on the Nabob of Arcot's debts—of Grattan on Tithes, and of Mr. Fox on the Westminster Scrutiny.]—a speech, whose only rivals perhaps in all the records of oratory, are to be found among three or four others of his own, which, like those poems of Petrarch called Sorelle from their kindred excellence, may be regarded as sisters in beauty, and equalled only by ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... France, of the troubadours, is of importance because of its effect on Italian literature;—the first literature of modern Europe to strike the true and grand note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and Petrarch it brought forth, classics. But the predominance of French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is due to its poetry of the langue d'oil, the poetry of northern France and of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... man noch heutiges Tags die Abbildung von Petrarch's Aufenthalt in Vaucluse, Tasso's Wohnung in Sorent! Und ist nicht immer die Bieler Insel, der Schutzort Rousseau's, ein seinen Verehrern nie genugsam ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the age was, of course, most rapid in Italy, where democracy had first asserted itself. In its train came intellectual ability, and by the middle of the fourteenth century Italy was in the full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... stony and beastly people, so among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the same kind ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... of his discoveries. The poets of all ages and nations adopt this view. Virgil describes Dido forsaken by AEneas, wandering alone on a desert shore in pursuit of the Tyrians. Milton represents Eve relating to Adam the dreams which were very naturally the repetition of her waking thoughts. Petrarch invokes the beauty of Laura. Eloisa, separated from Abelard, is again happy in his company, even amid the "dreary wastes" and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... time presents, there should be self-restraint on both sides, lest the inscription on the young wife's grave should be, as I have too often known it, the same as, in despite of poetry and romance, her biographer assigns as the cause of the death of Petrarch's Laura, that she died worn out crebris partubus, by ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... taking out some sheets of blank music-paper, began writing down the score of a little song at which he had been working. So he continued till lunch-time, and then, turning to the table when the scout called him, took his solitary lunch of bread and butter, with a volume of Petrarch set open before him as he eat. He was lazily Englishing the soft lines of the original into such verse as suited his fastidious ear, when the scout came in suddenly once more, bringing in his hand the mid-day letters. One of them bore the Calcombe ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... slight general notion of Italian letters from Leigh Hunt, and from other agreeable English Italianates; and I knew that I wanted to read not only the four great poets, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, but that whole group of burlesque poets, Pulci, Berni, and the rest, who, from what I knew of them, I thought would be even more to my mind. As a matter of fact, and in the process of time, I did read somewhat of all these, but rather ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... promptness of a bishop. She was so strictly orthodox that, on being compelled by stress of weather to land in England, she declined all communication with Queen Elizabeth, on account of her heresy. She was so eminently chaste that she could neither read the sonnets of Petrarch, nor lean on the arm of a gentleman. Her delicacy upon such points was, indeed, carried to such excess, that upon one occasion when the ship which was bringing her to the Netherlands was discovered to be burning, she rebuked a rude fellow ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it suffered occasional eclipse or even extinction on account of the constant war and desolation which vexed these parts almost without intermission during the years following the formation of the League of Cambrai. Indeed, as recently as 1500, the famous library collected by Petrarch, and presented by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to the University, was carried off ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... fatalities combined have for result a flower. A vague Rambouillet Palace is superposed upon the forbidding silhouette of the Salpetriere. The leprous wall of evil, suddenly covered with blossoms, affords a pendant to the wreath of Juliet. The sonnets of Petrarch, that flight of the ideal which soars in the shadow of souls, venture through the twilight towards this abjection and suffering, attracted by one knows not what obscure affinity, even as a swarm of bees is sometimes seen humming ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the blessed precincts of her convents into places of debauchery and licentiousness; her beautiful courtesans tore the diamonds from the tiara to make of them bracelets and necklaces; and finally she possessed the echoes of Vaucluse, which wafted the melodious strains of Petrarch's songs to her. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Romans sent an embassy to him to urge his return to Rome. The hope had long been at the root of Rienzi's life, and he must have already attained to a considerable reputation of learning and eloquence, since he was chosen to be one of the ambassadors. Petrarch conceived the highest opinion of him at their first meeting, and never withdrew his friendship from him to the end; the great poet joined his prayers with those of the Roman envoys, and supported Rienzi's eloquence with ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Poitou in the south, Normandy, Guisnes, Ponthieu, and Calais in the west were ceded to the English king. On its rejection Edward in 1360 poured ravaging over the wasted land. Famine however proved its best defence. "I could not believe," said Petrarch of this time, "that this was the same France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an utter poverty, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the neighbourhood of Paris showed everywhere ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... monsieur," said he, "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new. Victor Hugo has ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... always found plenty of friends. Her feline grace and softness has inspired some of the greatest, and, from Tasso and Petrarch down, her quiet and dignified demeanor have been celebrated in verse. Mr. Swinburne, within a few years, has written a charming poem which was published in the Athenaeum, and which places the writer among the select inner circle of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... were used as models for one of the most common forms of literary effort. There is a whole literature of epistles from Petrarch to the Epistolae obscurorum virorum. These are, to some degree, similar to the ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... physicians who showed a talent for investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... This remarkable modern craze for making one's philosophy, religion, politics, and temper all of a piece, of seeking in all incidents for opportunities to assert and reassert some favourite mental attitude, is a thing which existed comparatively little in other centuries. Solomon and Horace, Petrarch and Shakespeare were pessimists when they were melancholy, and optimists when they were happy. But the optimist of to-day seems obliged to prove that gout and unrequited love make him dance with joy, and the pessimist of to-day to prove that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... from Villon are those 'eyes with a big gay look out of them would bring folly from a great scholar.' More vivid surely than anything in Swinburne's version, and how noble those words which are yet simple country speech, in which his Petrarch mourns that death came upon Laura just as time was making chastity easy, and the day come when 'lovers may sit together and say out all things arc in their hearts,' and 'my sweet enemy was making a start, little by little, to give over her ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... of your poets? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante? Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine? Cieco di Hadria? ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... passive obedience is advocated to an extravagant extent, is generally considered to have added little to his reputation. He died in December 1649, in his sixty-fourth year. Ben Jonson is said to have so much admired the genius of this "Scotian Petrarch," as to travel on foot to Scotland, out of love ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... that can take place of humanity, and we find that in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breadth, and we think that we could have been that man's acquaintance. He was worthy to be a citizen of England, while Petrarch and Boccacio lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane in Switzerland and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wickliffe, and Gower, and Edward the Third, and John of Gaunt, and the Black Prince, were his own countrymen as well as contemporaries; all ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... objects of faith upon the other; that in deliberate, balanced opposition to the Rock of the Mount Zion, he reared the rock of Parnassus, and the rock of the Acropolis; that, among the masters of poetry we find him enthroning Petrarch and Pindar, but not Isaiah nor David, and for lords over the domain of philosophy we find the masters of the school of Athens, but neither of those greater masters by the last of whom that school was rebuked,—those who received ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... coloring the present, and that over a period of seventeen years, it must be regarded as a singular instance of enduring friendship, as it has shown itself in a very singular literary form. There is nothing like it that we remember, except the sonnets of Petrarch; for books of sportive and ludicrous conceits are not to be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... favors and appointments. He was sent on several diplomatic missions by the king, three of them to Italy, where, in all probability, he made the acquaintance of the new Italian literature, the writings of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He was appointed at different times Comptroller of the Wool Customs, Comptroller of Petty Customs, and Clerk of the Works. He sat for Kent in Parliament, and he received pensions from three successive kings. He was a man of business as well as books, and he loved ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was kept in Italian, and the reading of Italian books was pretty regularly kept up; among them were Olanda, Petrarch, and Ariosto. He soon abandoned Petrarch, whom he did not value much; here is the reason: "I prefer the clear movement of Ariosto to all the conceits ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... you have frown'd, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlock'd his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camens sooth'd an exile's grief; The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... mockingly exclaimed the pope. "Shall a Corilla desecrate the spot hallowed by the feet of Tasso and Petrarch? No, I say, no; when art becomes the plaything of a courtesan, then may the sacred Muses veil their heads and mourn in silence, but they must not degrade themselves by throwing away the crown which the best and noblest would give their heart's ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the ablest of French critics; but I must needs try to indicate briefly, as I see it, his significance in general European culture. And I would put it that Montaigne is really, for the civilised world at this day, what Petrarch has been too enthusiastically declared to be—the first of the moderns. He is so as against even the great Rabelais, because Rabelais misses directness, misses universality, misses lucidity, in his gigantic mirth; he is so as against Petrarch, because he is emphatically an ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... into light. He tarries awhile and then passes into darkness again. Micah, lad, the days are passing, mine as well as thine. Let them not be wasted. They are few in number. What says Petrarch?' To him that enters, life seems infinite; to him that departs, nothing.' Let every day, every hour, be spent in furthering the Creator's end—in getting out whatever power for good there is in you. What is pain, or work, or trouble? The cloud that passes over the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... glories of campaigns in Lombardy and Tuscany; priests would gratefully extol his constant defence of the papacy against Ghibelline attacks, and the founding of convents, hospitals, and churches throughout his kingdom; in the world of letters he was regarded as the most learned king in Christendom; Petrarch, indeed, would receive the poet's crown from no other hand, and had spent three consecutive days answering all the questions that Robert had deigned to ask him on every topic of human knowledge. The men of law, astonished by the wisdom of those laws which now enriched the Neapolitan ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rival of Richard coeur de lion. See D'Herbelot, Bibl. Orient. and Knolles's Hist. of the Turks p. 57 to 73 and the Life of Saladin, by Bohao'edin Ebn Shedad, published by Albert Schultens, with a Latin translation. He is introduced by Petrarch in the Triumph of Fame, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... his youth he had explored Italy almost from end to end; but the literary associations of the various towns were their principal charm. To him, Verona stood for Catullus, Brindisi for Virgil, Sorrento for Tasso, Florence for "the all Etruscan three," [93] Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Reggio and Ferrara for Ariosto. It was from Ariosto, perhaps through Camoens, who adopted it, that he took his ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... It was this multiform aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan, Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton, Alfieri, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... is ignorance or disregard of nature then that has given rise to supernatural ideas that have "no correspondence with true sight," or, as Holbach expressed it, have no counterpart in the external object. In other words, theology, or poetry about God, as Petrarch said, is ignorance of natural ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... Leonardo and Petrarch?" the great artist queried from his end of the table, and then for a few moments the conversation got off into the question of the social position of artists in the renaissance and their relation to their ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... God, and believe that He has granted the favour we have been praying for, even when in appearance it seems the reverse. As to the position which our body ought to assume when we address ourselves to the Creator, a line of Petrarch ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that time. The pulpit being an invariable index of the state of the national heart, it was not less the case during the present period. The preaching was of the most formal and methodical texture. It assumed a rhetorical and poetical appearance; the people calling it the Italian style. Petrarch had given shape to Italian thought, and through his influence Germany became sated with poetic imagery and overwrought fancy. Sagittarius founded a stipend for the preaching of a yearly sermon in the University Church ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... of Rome in utter abomination, and governed in matters of religion by the Presbyterian forms, and the tenets of Calvin. It is not to be wondered at, that the annalist of the countries of Tasso and Dante, of Titian and Machiavel, of Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci, of Galileo and Michael Angelo, should conceive, that in no other state of society is such scope afforded for mental cultivation and the development of the highest efforts of genius. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... thoroughly appreciated William Blake. One of the best copies of the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' that is now in existence was wrought specially for him. He loved Alain Chartier, and Ronsard, and the Elizabethan dramatists, and Chaucer and Chapman, and Petrarch. And to him all the arts were one. 'Our critics,' he remarks with much wisdom, 'seem hardly aware of the identity of the primal seeds of poetry and painting, nor that any true advancement in the serious study of one art co- generates a proportionate perfection in the ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... wily art to show their one good feature, though but an ear or an eyelash, at a jalosy, and hide all the rest; Magpies at the door, Capre n' i giardini, Angeli in Strada, Sante in chiesa, Diavoli in casa. Then come I and ransack the minstrels' lines for amorous turns, not forgetting those which Petrarch wasted on that French jilt Laura, the sliest of them all; and I lay you the whole bundle of spice at the feet of the only females worthy amorous incense; to wit, the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Catharine! Faugh! Her hands are large and red, her eyes are bold; when she is thirty she will be fat and perhaps dispensing cheap wine in a low cabaret. And you called me Rosalind between times and signed your verses and letters Orlando! You quoted from Petrarch and said I was your Laura. My faith! man is a curious animal. I have been told that I am beautiful; and from me you turned to a Catharine! I suspect she is ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... in the fourteenth century by Petrarch (Opp. de Otio Religiosor), which defends the truth of Christianity against Philosophers, Mahometans, and Jews: partly on the evidence of miracles, but mainly on the internal evidence of the purity and godliness of Christianity. In the early part of the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of the works of Petrarch in Latin, folio, 1501, occurs on the title: "Liber Antonij kressen juris vtriusq. doctoris emptus venecijs ligatus nurenberge Mcccccv;" and the noble old volume (now in the British Museum) is accompanied by a memoir of Kressen, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... he does not know 'at what time, or by what means Johnson had acquired a competent knowledge of Italian.' In my note on this I say 'he had read Petrarch "when but a boy."' As Petrarch wrote chiefly in Latin, it is quite possible that Johnson did not acquire his knowledge of Italian so early ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... is made interesting by association with illustrious memories. Coblontz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and Dante, "buried ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... has seen fairies scampering over moor and hill and the remembrance of them teases her memory. Katherine is not so faithless as her ways might lead you to believe. Laura without dark eyes would be impossible, and her predestined Petrarch would never deliver his sonnets. Helen may be seen only against a background of Trojan wall. Gertrude must be tall and fair and ready with ballads in the winter twilight. Julia's reserve and discretion commend her to you; but ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... more interested in hearing that it was: "after he had come under the spell of Petrarch and Boccaccio that Chaucer produced his wondrous Tales," but it appeared their interest was due to some slight misapprehension. Daphne felt the fearful joy of suppressed mirth combined with the danger of detection as she heard Edna explaining with laborious ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... base into a shadowy cavern,—such is the first of my memories of the Vaucluse. At the entrance of the little town stands a low white-walled building, over the door of which is a tablet inscribed thus: "On the site of this cafe Petrarch established his study. Here he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... occasioned him much misfortune. His attachments were numerous, and one to Morvydd, the daughter of Madog Lawgam, of Niwbwrch, in Anglesea, a Welsh chieftain, caused the bard to be imprisoned. This lady was the subject of a great portion of the bard's poems. Dafydd ap Gwilym has been styled the Petrarch of Wales. He composed some 260 poems, most of which are sprightly, figurative, and pathetic. The late lamented Arthur James Johnes, Esquire, translated the poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym into English. They are very beautiful, and were published by Hooper, Pall ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... about one sixth only of Dante was intelligible or pleasurable. Turning to Landor's writings, I find that in his younger days he was even less favorable to Dante. In the "Pentemeron" (the author spelling it so) he, in the garb of Petrarch, asserts that "at least sixteen parts in twenty of the Inferno and Purgatorio are detestable both in poetry and principle; the higher parts are excellent, indeed." Dante's powers of language, he allows, "are prodigious; and, in the solitary places where he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... expected from him such supererogatory labour. His memory enabled him to accumulate great stores of a desultory and unsystematic knowledge. Somehow he became a fine Latin scholar, though never first-rate as a Grecian. The direction of his studies was partly determined by the discovery of a folio of Petrarch, lying on a shelf where he was looking for apples; and one of his earliest literary plans, never carried out, was an edition of Politian, with a history of Latin poetry from the time of Petrarch. When he went to the University at ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... paintings, I next inquired after the Libraries which Paris contains; these are very numerous, but as I had so much to see, I contented myself with visiting the two principal ones, first, the royal library, Rue Richelieu. This contains the library of Petrarch, which alone would render it an object of curiosity. Here are also the globes of the Jesuit Coronelli, which are upwards of thirty-four feet in circumference. The Cabinet of Antiquities contains the collection of Count Caylus. The number of printed volumes is stated to ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Mary, Petrarch's Laura, and other real and imaginary loves of the poets, have been immortalized in song, but we doubt whether any of the numerous objects of poetical adoration were more worthy of honor than Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the friend and defender of Edgar A. Poe. That he should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... of courtly makers, of whom sir Thomas Wyat the elder and Henry earl of Surry were the two chieftains; who having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... learned education at one, or at both of the universities, and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued with the spirit and excellences of the great Italian poets and prose-writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccace; and is said to have had a personal interview with one of these, Petrarch. He was connected, by marriage, with the famous John of Gaunt, through whose interest he was introduced into several public employments. Chaucer was an ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... giving it that character of humane culture which it retained throughout the age of the Renaissance. To him, again, belongs the glory of having first collected books for the express purpose of founding a public library. This project had occupied the mind of Petrarch, and its utility had been recognised by Coluccio de' Salutati, but no one had as yet arisen to accomplish it. "Being passionately fond of literature, Messer Palla always kept copyists in his own house and outside it, of the best who were in Florence, both for Greek ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... with that courage and those hopes wherewith such just actions are to be attempted; to the end that under your colours, this countrey may be enabled, and under the protection of your fortune that saying of Petrarch be verifyed. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... our day. Moral Influence of Friendships between Men and Women. Analysis of Platonic Love. Laura and Petrarch. Beatrice and Dante. Heloise and Abelard. Danger and Safety of Platonic Love. Countess Matilda and Hildebrand. The "Woldemar" of Jacobi. Influence of Chivalry in developing Friendships of Men and Women. Causes of Prominent Social Position of Women in France. Friendships in Catholic Church between ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... one end of Europe to the other, the imaginations of the Middle Ages. The amorous languor and the subtlety of our "courteous poetry" are breathed no less by the madrigals of Shakespeare himself than by Petrarch's sonnets; and after such a long lapse of time we still discover something that comes from us even in the Wagnerian drama, for instance in 'Parsifal' or in 'Tristan and Isolde.' A long time later, in a Europe belonging entirely to classicism, from the beginning of the seventeenth to the end of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... in Chaucer's Compleint to his Lady. In the sixteenth century Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey ("Description of the restless state of a lover"), "as novises newly sprung out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch" (Puttenham's Art of Poesie, 1589, pp. 48-50); and later again, Daniel ("To the Lady Lucy, Countess of Bedford"), Ben Jonson, and Milton (Psalms ii., vi.) afford specimens of terza rima. There was, too, one among Byron's contemporaries ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... give him a description of the Countess of ———'s rout on Saturday last, in Berkeley-square, where I intimated I should be, when I last fell in with him. 'Oh Cielo Empireo.' I'm enchanted yet, positively enchanted! I ought to have Petrarch's pen to describe such a scene and such dresses. Then should a robe of Tulle vie with that of Laura at the church door—that dress of 'Vert parsemee de violets.' But softly, let us begin with the beginning, Belier mon ami. What a galaxy of all the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Did Dante remember meeting Beatrice—did Petrarch remember Laura? Did Keats forget his Fanny Brawne? Did Richard ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... /Divina Comedia/ of the beauties of Roman literature with the teaching of the Fathers and Scholastics, still, the spirit that inspired him was the spirit of Christianity, and his outlook on life was frankly the outlook of the Middle Ages. To Petrarch (1304-74) rather belongs the honour of having been the most prominent, if not the very first writer, whose works were influenced largely by Humanist ideals. Born in Arezzo in 1304, he accompanied his father to Avignon when the latter ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Perhaps it might be from the over-tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might be that as yet she had only experienced the villany of man born and reared in these cold northern climates, and in the land of Petrarch and Romeo, of the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the native monster would be more amenable to gentle influences, less obstinately hardened in his iniquities. Without entering further into these hypotheses, it is sufficient to say that, on Signor Riccabocca's ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... love, the grief, the triumph of this man and no other. It possesses the pathos and the beauty of countless human lives prolonged through inarticulate generations, finding utterance at last in it. It is deficient in that particular intonation which makes a Shelley's voice differ from a Leopardi's, Petrarch's sonnets for Laura differ from Sidney's sonnets for Stella. It has always less of perceptible artistic effect, more enduring human quality. Some few of its lines are so well found, so rightly said, that they possess the certainty of natural things—a quality ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding nothing in the word "eclogue" of rural meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions "AEglogues," by ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... relative sense; this Magdalen will not be finished till I stop working at it, and then it will be only finished relatively, for if I were to give another day's work to it it would be more finished still. Not one of Petrarch's sonnets is a really finished production; no, nor any other man's sonnets. Nothing that the mind of man can conceive is perfect, save ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... profounder in his insight into the human heart. But a common atmosphere of elegy pervades the work of both, and if Gibbon again and again forgets the inquiry with which he set out, the charm of his work gains thereby. A pensive melancholy akin to that of Petrarch's Trionfi, or the Antiquites de Rome of Joachim du Bellay, redeems from monotony, by the emotion it communicates, the over-stately march of many a balanced period.[8] But it were as vain to seek in Tasso for a philosophic theory of the Crusades as seek ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... triumphal car, drawn by different animals—one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.—A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either taken from the triumphs of Petrarch, or imitated from the triumphs introduced in the Polifilo. Graphic representations of allegories are susceptible of so many variations, that an artist, embodying the ideas of the poet, might produce a representation ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... writing of the memorial to Petrarch at Arqua, expressed with admirable feeling the sentiment that would confine outward memorials of a poet in his native town to the places where he was born, lived, died, and was buried. With very little verbal change Byron's ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... famous poet of the tribe of the Benou Udhreh, renowned for their passionate sincerity in love-matters. He is celebrated as the lover of Butheineh, as Petrarch of Laura, and died A.D. 701, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... however, is not in nature, but artificially produced by the understanding, it has only a logical reality, and the feeling is not purely human. It was not an illusion that Heloise had for Abelard, Petrarch for Laura, Saint Preux for his Julia, Werther for his Charlotte; Agathon, Phanias, and Peregrinus—in Wieland—for the object of their dreams: the feeling is true, only the object is factitious and outside nature. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... time, he began to discover the benefit of it. His soul had expanded, so that he was now in communion with all that is great in Nature and in Art. The harmony of the sky, the silence of night, the murmur of flowing water, Petrarch, Michel Angelo, Shakespeare, all appealed to him. The day ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... in Italy. Its importation from the North had checked the free development of national architecture, which in the eleventh century began at Pisa by a conscious return to classic details. But the reign of Gothic was destined to be brief. Petrarch and Boccaccio, as I showed in my last volume, turned the whole intellectual energy of the Florentines into the channels of Latin and Greek scholarship.[26] The ancient world absorbed all interests, and the Italians with one will shook themselves free of the medieval style they ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... thus vouchsafed his native tendency toward sentiment helped not only to swell the hearts of his clients with gratitude, but also to swell his own slender income. Thus it was that the fire of his poetic genius was enkindled, and thus it was he became the Petrarch ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... indeed the only monarch of our age who was, at the same time, the friend of learning and of virtue, and I trusted that he might correct such things as he found to criticise in my work." Having learned the reason of the great poet's visit, King Robert fixed a day for the consideration of Petrarch's work; but, after a discussion which lasted from noon until evening, it was found that more time would be necessary on account of the many matters which came up, and so the two following days were passed in the same manner. Then, at last, Petrarch ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... a lady of Avignon, the wife of Hugues de Sade, n['e]e Laura de Noves, the mistress of the poet Petrarch. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore was of the Onesti family, as was S. Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as we have seen, the first as we may ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the invention of Italic types by Aldus Manutius, of Venice, in 1501. He took for his model the handwriting of the poet Petrarch and produced a type not essentially different from the modern Italic. Originally the Italic letters were lower-case only, Roman capitals being retained. The incongruousness of this combination was, however, so evident that Italic capitals were soon designed and then the new ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... only vaguely. Even the degree of facility that is implied in any enjoyment of scenery is not so much a matter of course as it seems. Caesar occupied himself, while crossing the Alps, with composing a grammatical treatise. There is no evidence that there was anything odd in this. Perhaps Petrarch was the first man that ever climbed a hill to enjoy the view. We are not aware how much of what we see in Nature is due to pictures. Hardly any man is so unsophisticated, but that, if he should try ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... la solitaria vita," Petrarch, referring to himself, declared, and Tiberius might have said the same thing. He was in love with solitude; ill with efforts for the unattained; sick with the ingratitude of man. Presently it was decided that he had lived long enough. He was suffocated—beneath ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... for the interests of literature, that poets may always be lovers, though I cannot say that I desire lovers should always be poets. But, Mr. Hervey, you must never marry, remember," continued Dr. X——, "never—for your true poet must always be miserable. You know Petrarch tells us, he would not have been happy if he could; he would not have married his mistress if it had been in his power; because then there would have been an ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... going daily to study the rudiments of grammar, under the excellent instruction of the venerable brother of St. Mark, Friar Georgio Antonio Vespucci, my uncle, whose counsels would to God I had followed! for then, as Petrarch says, I should have been a different ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... had offered Michael Angelo a home was delighted with his young friend. He found him keenly interested in Dante and Petrarch, and equally gifted as a sculptor and painter. He gave him work to do in the Church of San Petronio, and Michael did so well there that the artists of Bologna grew jealous of him, and at the end of the year forced ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... himself, only make darker by contrast the desolation and suffering by which their glory was purchased. The poetic illusion inspired by Froissart's chronicles of knightly deeds and manners is rudely torn when we read Petrarch's description of France after the battle of Poitiers; "I could not believe that this was the same France which I had seen so rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, land uncultivated, houses in ruins. Even the neighborhood ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... of the sonnet cycle. The sonnet has been likened to an exquisite crystal goblet that holds one sublimely inspired thought so perfectly that not another drop can be added without overflow. Cast in the early Italian Renaissance by Dante, Petrarch and Camoens, it was chased and ornamented during the Elizabethan period by Shakespere, and filled with its most stimulating draughts of song and love during the Victorian era by Rossetti, Browning and Meredith. And now, in this first ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... [68]supernatural in nature, which had given them such dear delight in the poems of their great masters. Nay, even at this day what scholar of genial taste will not so far sympathize with them, as to read with pleasure in Petrarch, Chaucer, or Spenser, what he would perhaps condemn as puerile ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... characters of our age. The names of Stuart, Mackenzie, Ellis, Currie, and Ritson, with many others, are talismans too powerful to be used, for bespeaking the world's favour to a collection of old songs; even although a veteran bard has remarked, "that both the great poet of Italian rhyme, Petrarch, and our Chaucer, and other of the upper house of the muses, have thought their canzons honoured in the title of a ballad." To my ingenious friend, Dr. John Leyden, my readers will at once perceive that I lie under extensive obligations, for the poetical ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... conferred on them to preserve liberty itself! These factions often shook, by their jealousies, their fears, and their hatreds, that divided land, which groaned whenever they witnessed the "Ultramontanes" descending from their Alps and their Apennines. Petrarch, in a noble invective, warmed by Livy and ancient Rome, impatiently beheld the French and the Germans passing the mounts. "Enemies," he cries, "so often conquered prepare to strike with swords which formerly served us to raise our trophies: shall the mistress of the world bear chains forged by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... patient self-sacrifice, and contributing to the growth of humanity by worthy examples, and by propounding successively more and more rational modes for the informing and developing of youthful minds; and, see! Confucius, Socrates and Plato, Petrarch, Bacon, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Pere Girard, Arnold of Rugby, and Horace Mann—to make no mention of many co-laborers among the dead, and earnest successors among the living—stepping from their niches in the vanishing corridors of history, lay at our feet the treasures accumulated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Virgin in his hatband? For good and for evil! Popes, Anti-popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream: there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This was ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... agriculture, and in some places curious geology. He next advances to those parts of Italy which are rich in the finest monuments of art, and associated with all that is interesting in the period of the revival of literature; with Dante, Boccacio, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and the Medici. The proofs of commercial wealth, united with magnificence and taste, present themselves to him in the palaces of Genoa, Venice, and Florence; and he hears, on every side, the most ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Without his Roe, like a dryed Hering. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified? Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his Lady, was a kitchen wench, marrie she had a better Loue to berime her: Dido a dowdie, Cleopatra a Gipsie, Hellen and Hero, hildings and Harlots: Thisbie a gray eie or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, Bon iour, there's a French salutation ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... saw, was lost to a noble lady, whom, from his inferior station, he could woo only as a moth might woo the moon. He subsequently returned to Great Britain, and rode about on horseback gathering materials of history. He visited Italy under excellent auspices, and, together with Chaucer and with Petrarch, witnessed a magnificent marriage ceremonial in Milan. Froissart continued to travel far and wide, always a favorite with princes, but always intent on achieving his projected work. He finally died at Chimay, where he had spent his closing years ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... book at even as I read Fast fading words adown my shadowy page, I crossed a tale of how, in other age, At Arqua, with his books around him, sped The word to Petrarch; and with noble head Bowed gently o'er his volume that sweet sage To Silence paid his willing seigniorage. And they who found ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Julian—"I'm afraid, Miss Vancourt, that if you knew how often I have sat alone in this library, turning over the precious volumes, you might be very angry with me! But I have saved one or two from the encroaches of damp, such as the illuminated vellum 'Petrarch,' and some few rare manuscripts—so you must try to forgive my trespass. Mrs. Spruce used to let me come in and study here ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... finds them in the trampled marketplaces of two noisy, turbulent, unreasonable, pestilent little democratic cities,—Athens and Florence. Extinguish the architecture and the sculpture, the poetry and the philosophy of Attica; obliterate from the sum of civilization the names of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli,—of Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Michel Angelo,—of Brunetto, Ficino, Politian; and how much diminished will be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Aubert and Emily retired to their rooms, and Valancourt to his station at the door, which, at this mild season, he preferred to a close cabin and a bed of skins. St. Aubert was somewhat surprised to find in his room volumes of Homer, Horace, and Petrarch; but the name of Valancourt, written in them, told ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Where best the poet framed his piece, Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground Pausanias on his travels found Good poems, if he look'd, more rare (Though many) than good statues were— For these, in truth, were everywhere. Of bards full many a stroke divine In Dante's, Petrarch's, Tasso's line, The land of Ariosto show'd; And yet, e'en there, the canvas glow'd With triumphs, a yet ampler brood, Of Raphael and his brotherhood. And nobly perfect, in our day Of haste, half-work, and disarray, Profound yet touching, sweet yet strong, Hath risen Goethe's, Wordsworth's song; ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... with others, were published by me elsewhere, as I state further on. The volume also contains some of my less faulty translations, as from Sappho, AEschylus, Pythagoras, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Petrarch, &c. And here I will give a chance specimen out of my "Septuagint of Worthies," to each one of whom I have appropriated a page or two of explanatory prose besides his fourteen lines of poetry. Take my sonnet on ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... would be at the Palace of the Popes or in the Cathedral, we went to the Museum, and searched in vain among a riot of Roman remains for the tomb of Petrarch's Laura, which guide-books promised. In the end we had to be satisfied with a memorial cross made in the lovely lady's honour by order of some ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... old town, rich with historical and religious associations, and as the birth-place of Petrarch, possessed a singular interest in the eyes of Isabel; for, just then, she was keenly alive to all that was sad in the life and love ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... and various other minor works on his way there and back to Florence. Staying in his native city but a little while, he engaged himself in other tasks at Ferrara, Verona, and Ravenna, and at last at Avignon, where he became acquainted with Petrarch—working there for some three years, from 1324 to 1327;[10] and then passed rapidly through Florence and Orvieto on his way to Naples, where "he received the kindest welcome from the good king Robert. The king, ever partial to men of mind and genius, took ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... applaud invariably, at the same passage. Who ever rose from the Inferno of Dante without looking back to the story of Ugolino and of Francesca? If a volume of choice extracts were to be culled from the works of Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch, an Englishman and an Italian would make no greater difference in their selection than would two Englishmen or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... charm of the Lieder themselves. But these Lieder are, for probable freedom from indebtedness and intrinsic exquisiteness of phrase and rhythm, unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled. To compare Walther to Petrarch, and to talk of the one being superior or inferior to the other, is to betray hopeless insensibility to the very rudiments of criticism. They are absolutely different,—the one the embodiment of stately form and laboured intellectual effort—of the Classical spirit; the other ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... . . despis'd. The editor of the 1873 edition of Chapman's Plays points out that "these twelve lines headed Of great men appear, with a few unimportant verbal differences, among the Epigrams printed at the end of Chapman's Petrarch in 1612." ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... their lives. It was the summer of 1808, and the aeronauts, MM. Andreoli and Brioschi, ascending from Padua, reach a height at which a barometer sinks to eight inches, indicating upwards of 30,000 feet. At this point the balloon bursts, and falls precipitately near Petrarch's tomb. Commenting on this, Mr. Glaisher, the value of whose opinion is second to none, is not disposed to question the general truth of the narrative. In regard to Zambeccari's escape from the sea related above, it should be stated that in the case of a gas-inflated balloon which has no more than ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... remarkable and interesting books are the Greek Grammar of Lascaris, printed at Milan in 1476; the Liber Psalmorum, printed at Milan in 1481; Maioli's copy of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499; and a fine copy of Petrarch's Sonetti e Canzoni, on vellum, printed by Aldus in 1501, which formerly belonged to Isabella d'Este, wife of Gian-Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. This was the first Italian book printed in ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... remarked: "I was once the most enormous devourer of the Italian romantic poetry, which indeed is the only poetry of their country which I ever had much patience for; for after all that has been said of Petrarch and his school, I am always tempted to exclaim like honest Christopher Sly, 'Marvellous good matter, would it were done.' But with Charlemagne and his paladins I could dwell forever."[75] Scott learned languages easily, and he read Spanish with about as much facility as ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Petronius was probably entire in the days of John of Salisbury, who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of the Roman bard. Raimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the papal court, possessed two books of Cicero "on Glory," which he presented to Petrarch, who lent them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by extreme want, the old man pawned them, and returning home died suddenly without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ecstasy, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... not been altogether free from it. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, became a prey to its disastrous influences. In England Dryden, Addison, Swift, Shaftesbury, were its victims. So it has been everywhere, and in Italy even Petrarch, the meek and excellent Petrarch, was ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... said that she had read those Italian poets in Leigh Hunt's version of them when she was a girl, and it had had the effect of making her think she had read the poets themselves, and she had not since read directly Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, or Tasso. She regarded that as an irreparable injury, and she doubted whether, if the great English poets could be introduced in that manner, very many people would pursue their acquaintance for themselves. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... opus 11 is a "Valse Brillante," warm and melodious. Opus 13 is a "Sonnet," based, after the plan of Liszt, upon a lyric of Petrarch's, a beautiful translation from his "Gli occhi di ch'io parlai si caldamente." It is full of passion, and shows a fine variety in the handling of persistent repetition. Opus 18 couples two sonatinas. The second has the more merit, but both, like most sonatinas, are too trivial ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... clearest water flowing by. On the little square before the church-door, where the peasants congregate at mass-time—open to the skies with all their stars and storms, girdled by the hills, and within hearing of the vocal stream—is Petrarch's sepulchre. Fit resting-place for what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it down here on the hill-side, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. A simple rectilinear ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... built as a kind of anticipation of the crystal palace, and the roof of which is said to be the largest unsupported by pillars in the world. It covers—so the Paduans believe—the bones of Livy, who is claimed as a native of Padua. It was here Petrarch died, which has given occasion to Lazzarini to join together the cradle of the historian and the tomb of the poet, in the following ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... prince Khusru Parviz was celebrated throughout the East for its splendour and magnificence; and the chaste love of the poet Farhad for his beautiful queen Shirin is the theme of almost as many poems in the East as that of Petrarch's for Laura is in the West. Nuh Samani, who ascended the throne of Persia after the Sassanians,[9] ascertained that the moon was in the sign Leo at the time of his accession, and ordered that the gold head ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of unburdening hearts has been continuous since we discovered the boundless capacity of the hills to hide our shame and discharge our thunder. Petrarch set the example on the top of Mont Ventoux when he deliberately recollected and wept over his past uncleanness and the carnal corruptions of his soul. I never tire of that dearly sentimental mixture of world-weariness and nature-study ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... long after, one of the most polished nations of Europe. The light which art and literature then shed over Italy, was reflected on every nation whose language emanated from the same source as that of Dante and Petrarch. It might have been expected that a general improvement of manners would be the natural consequence of this noble awakening of the mind, this sublime soaring of the imagination. But in distant regions, wherever ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... number of such popes as loved fuddling, all those who sat at Avignon; for if we believe Petrarch[2], the long residence that the court of Rome made at Avignon, was only to taste the good French wines; and that it was merely on that account they stayed so long in Provence, and ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... to be seen abroad. Above all there is Chaucer,—scholar, traveler, business man, courtier, sharing in all the stirring life of his times, and reflecting it in literature as no other but Shakespeare has ever done. Outside of England the greatest literary influence of the age was that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose works, then at the summit of their influence in Italy, profoundly affected ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long |
