"Petrarch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphael's frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and Pope's poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... then: I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... so bravely? See, the colours shine in him like fifty different kinds of ribbands. Poor fellow! he could not curl his moustachios now, though the loveliest eyes in Europe were fixed in passionate admiration on him. He'll never slit another throat, nor hiccup Petrarch over a goblet nor remonstrate with me on my humanity. Shall we toss the bodies over ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the Spaniards were at that period, and 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 the thirst of wealth has introduced the abuse of power, the nations ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... pubblico at Florence, 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 ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... piano compositions 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. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... centre then passed, that is in the thirteenth century, to Bologna and Florence. Among the celebrated Tuscans of this epoch was Guittone of Arezzo, mentioned by Dante and Petrarch with more or less consideration; Jacopone of Todi, at once both mystic and buffoon, in whom it has been sought, in a manner somewhat flattering to him, to trace a predecessor of Dante; Brunetto Latini, the authentic master of Dante, who was encyclopaedic, after a fashion, and who published, ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... He received a 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. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... of Vice in 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 ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... gardens," says Petrarch, "and I do not imagine that they are to be equalled in all the world. I should feel myself inclined to be angry with fortune if there were any so beautiful out of Italy." "I wish," says poor Kirke White writing to a friend, "I wish you to have a taste of these ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... chart of the heavenly bodies (a solar system at least with comets) that hung up in his room as a substitute. He had little reverence for the petrefactions of Monte Bolca I perceived, which he considered as mere lufus naturae. He shewed me poor Petrarch's tomb from his observatory, bid me look on Sir Isaac's full-length picture in the room, and said, the world would see no more such men. Of our Maskelyne, however, no man could speak with more esteem, or expressions ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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 ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... happens that the mind of each veils its passion under a different appearance, and beneath a smiling visage, gay beneath a sombre air."—Petrarch.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... friends and giving them all the money in his pocket. With Messer Aldovrandi he remained more than a year, much honoured by his new patron, who took great delight in his genius; "and every evening he made Michelangelo read aloud to him out of Dante or Petrarch, and sometimes Boccaccio, until he went to sleep." He also worked upon the tomb of San Domenico during this first residence at Bologna. Originally designed and carried forward by Niccolo Pisano, this elaborate specimen of mediaeval sculpture remained in some points ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... poets,—men of the world, who like Chaucer quoted authorities even more abundantly than they used them, and made some of their happiest discoveries after the fashion in which the "Oxford Clerk" came across Petrarch's Latin version of the story of Patient Grissel: as it were by accident. There is only too ample a justification for leaving aside the records of the history of learning in England during the latter half of the fourteenth century in any sketch of the main influences ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... unostentatious yet affectionate tributes to three of the most illustrious names in literature and art: DANTE, and PETRARCH, the celebrated Italian poets; and CANOVA, whose labours have all the freshness and finish of yesterday's chisel. Lord Byron, whose enthusiasm breathes and lives in words that "can never die," has enshrined these memorials in the masterpiece of his genius. Associating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... sweep out through the castle gates in the summer morning; once more, under vaulted loggias and high-arched balconies, we see the courtly scholar bending earnestly over some classic page, or catch the voice of high-born maiden singing Petrarch's ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Fashionable Criticism. Whiskey Punch and Logic. "Shylock asks for Justice!" "Lorette" and "Grisette." Kissing Day. The Tattoo. The Masked Ball. The Incognita. The Charms of Paris. Changing Horses. A View in Lyons. Avignon—Petrarch and Laura. Our First Ruin. The Unconscious Blessing. A Crash and a Wreck. The Railroad of Life. A Night Adventure. "The Gods take care of Cato." The Triumphs of Neptune. The Marquisi's Foot. Beauties of Naples Bay. Natural History of the Lazaroni. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Caraccio, Aretine, and Raphael studied the figures on the old oboli and drachmas. So did Le Brun. Rubens was the most conscientious coin and medal gatherer of his time, and applied them sedulously to the furtherance of his divine gifts. Petrarch found time between his sonnets to Laura to make the first classified collection on record, which he presented to the emperor of Germany, with his well-known and remarkable letter. Alphonso, king of Naples, visited all parts of Europe gathering coins in an ivory casket. The splendid Cosmo de' Medici ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... both portraiture of study and for purposes of analysis, as with Leonardo; and actual, professed, serviceable, hardworking portraiture of the men of their time, as with Raffaelle, and Titian, and Tintoret; and portraiture of Love, as with Fra Bartolomeo of Savonarola, and Simon Memmi of Petrarch, and Giotto of Dante, and Gentile Bellini of a beloved imagination of Dandolo, and with Raffaelle constantly; and portraiture in real downright necessity of models, even in their noblest works, as was the practice of Ghirlandajo perpetually, and Masaccio and Raffaelle, and manifestly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... forms of the 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... better passions were moved. Thus he lived, like some old troubadour, by his rhymes, and his chants, and his virelays; and, after a year's absence, our bard returned in the triumph of verse. This was the most seducing moment of life; RITSON felt himself a laureated Petrarch; but he had now quitted his untutored but feeling admirers, and the child of fancy was to mix with ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Burns's Highland 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... bathos: it is given simply because Chaucer translated (using the term in its best and highest sense) into his pure, simple and strong English tongue with all its linguistic peculiarities, the thoughts and fancies of his foreign models, the very letter and spirit of Petrarch and Boccaccio." ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... her society, and it never hung heavy on their hands. The stranger was fond of music, and Emily, besides being mistress of her instrument, possessed naturally a fine voice. Neither did she sing and play unrewarded; Burleigh taught her the most enchanting of all modern languages—the language of Petrarch and Tasso; and being well versed in the use of the pencil, showed her how to give to her landscapes a richer finish and a bolder effect. Then they read together; and as they looked with a smile into each other's countenances, the fascinating pages of fiction seemed ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... bulk and abstract opposition, they remain two. Their values must be compared, and obviously neither one can be the standard by which to judge the other. This standard is an ideal involved in the judgment passed, whatever that judgment may be. Thus when Petrarch says that a thousand pleasures are not worth one pain, he establishes an ideal of value deeper than either pleasure or pain, an ideal which makes a life of satisfaction marred by a single pang an offence and a horror to his soul. If our ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 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 bearing a close resemblance ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... read Rabindranath every day, to read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.' I said, 'An Englishman living in London in the reign of Richard the Second had he been shown translations from Petrarch or from Dante, would have found no books to answer his questions, but would have questioned some Florentine banker or Lombard merchant as I question you. For all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new renaissance has ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... advertise the appearance of one of the finest books of the age, l'Archer de Charles IX.! We will appeal to Dauriat to bring out as soon as possible les Marguerites, those divine sonnets by the French Petrarch! We must carry our friend through on the shield of stamped paper by which reputations are made ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Translations (1910), a volume which was not issued until after his death, contains not only his few hard and earthy verses, but also Synge's theory of poetry. The translations, which have been rendered in a highly intensified prose, are as racy as anything in his plays; his versions of Villon and Petrarch are remarkable for their adherence to the original and still radiate ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... properly called a comedy. He would declare that 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and confidential in her company. The Tutor is not only a poet, but is a great reader of the poetry of many languages. It so happened that Number Five was puzzled, one day, in reading a sonnet of Petrarch, and had recourse to the Tutor to explain the difficult passage. She found him so thoroughly instructed, so clear, so much interested, so ready to impart knowledge, and so happy in his way of doing it, that she asked him if he would not allow her the privilege of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Skeat, 1894, i. 76, 261), are imbedded 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 who had already made trial of the metre in his Prince ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... an ancient Tuscan city, 38 m. SE. of Florence, and eventually subject to it; the birthplace of Maecenas, Michael Angelo, Petrarch, Guido, and Vasari. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... (1500-1544), in concert with his friend Garcilasso, Italianized Castilian poetry. He was the author of the Leandro, a poem in blank verse, of canzoni, and sonnets after the model of Petrarch, and of The Allegory.—History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the 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 removed with ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... in which happy love, satisfied love, is depicted. Rousseau puts too much rhetoric in his attempt, and Richardson too much preaching. The poets have too many flourishes; the novelists are too much the slaves of facts. Petrarch is too exclusively occupied with his images of speech and his concetti; he sees the poetry more than the woman. Pope has given perhaps too many regrets to Heloise; he wanted her to be better than nature; and the better is an enemy to the good. In fine, God, who created ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... essay concerned chiefly with the poet's more intimate experiences. In point of fact, the tracking of poetic reminiscences in a poet who lived when no concealment of borrowed thought was demanded does as much violence to Vergil as it does to Euripides or Petrarch. The poet has always been expected to give expression to his own convictions, but until recently it has been considered a graceful act on his part to honor the good work of his predecessors by the frank use, in recognizable form, of the lines that he most admires. The only requirement ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... and would help to usher in a period of greater political equality. The university schools of Theology were in time to send forth the keenest critics of the practices of the Church. Out of the university cloisters were to come the men—Dante, Petrarch, Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton—who were to usher in the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... from sight the host of minor poets who preceded him, and throws his own contemporaries so into the shade that we are apt to think that Italian poetry began with him, and that its second exponent is Petrarch. Such a view is to be regretted, not only because it overlooks much that is in itself valuable, but because it attributes to a period of slow development a phenomenal character. There were many poets worth listening to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... on grave authority that "Woman is an animal that delights in the toilette," while Petrarch, in 1366, recognized the power of fashion over its votaries. "Who can see with patience," he writes, "the monstrous fantastical inventions which people of our times have invented to deform rather than adorn their persons? Who can behold without indignation ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... 49l):—'Godwin, Lofft, and Thelwall are the only three persons I know (except Hazlitt) who grieve at the late events'—the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He found long after his death 'a MS. by him in these words:—"Rousseau, Euripides, Tasso, Racine, Cicero, Virgil, Petrarch, Richardson. If I had five millions of years to live upon this earth, these I would read daily with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... country girl to respond to our summons at the door, and nothing but a tub of corn-meal disputed our passage inside. Directly I found the house inhabited by living people, I began to be sorry that it was not as empty as the Library and the street. Indeed, it is much better with Petrarch's house at Arqua, where the grandeur of the past is never molested by the small household joys and troubles of the present. That house is vacant, and no eyes less tender and fond than the poet's visitors may look down from its windows over the slope of vines and olives which it ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... 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 his own genius in a Latin poem. But nothing could avail to move the Pope. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... the great Florentine poet, he rated the Inferno below the two latter portions of the Divina Commedia; there was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the Paradiso. Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less idolatry than Dante; and the sonnets here printed will show to all competent judges how fully he had imbibed the spirit, without servile centonism, of the best writers in that style of composition who flourished ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Petrarch completes the Illustrated Library series of the Italian Poets emphatically distinguished as ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the first collection of sonnets, Olive. The influence of Petrarch is evident. Compare also the lines of the sestet with the final stanzas of Lamartine's Isolement, p. 65. 22. En 1'eternel ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... 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. They would think they ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... marked by clear insight, large human love, and 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Strad? Let's have it out," says Sally. For Mr. Bradshaw possessed a Strad. He brought it out of its coffin with something of the solicitude Petrarch might have shown to the remains of Laura, and when he had rough-sketched its condition of discord and corrected the drawing, danced a Hungarian dance on it, and apologized for his presumption in doing so. He played so very well that it certainly ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Sonnet; Critic, 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 ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... however, 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 ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... sent the circle as his contribution to the specimens required by the Pope. The audacious specimen was accepted as the most conclusive, Giotto was chosen as the Pope's painter for the occasion, and from the incident arose the Italian proverb 'round as the o of Giotto.' Giotto was the friend of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, especially of Dante, to whom the grandeur of some of the painter's designs has been vaguely enough attributed. The poet of the 'Inferno' wrote of ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... resting-place in the pilgrimage 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
... than to resolve, that the change of fortune on the great theatre, is but as the change of garments on the less. For when on the one and the other, every man wears but his own skin, the players are all alike. Now, if any man out of weakness prize the passages of this world otherwise (for saith Petrarch, "Magni ingenii est revocare mentem a sensibus"[21]) it is by reason of that unhappy phantasy of ours, which forgeth in the brains of man all the miseries (the corporal excepted) whereunto he is subject. Therein it is, that misfortunes and adversity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... inhabit with us—avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.—PETRARCH. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of passion was not to surround my fated steps for ever. Noble aspirations rose in my melancholy heart. I had seen the birth of true science, true liberty, and true wisdom. I had lived with Petrarch, stood enraptured beside the easel of Angelo and Raphael. I had stood at Maintz, beside the wonder-working machine that makes knowledge imperishable, and sends it with winged speed through the earth. At the pulpit of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 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 ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... he said. Yet he save himself caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course. Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and their hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the aspirations of a world arise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... five* plain words upon his tomb. And this serious per- son, though no minor wit, left the poetry of his epitaph unto others; either unwilling to commend himself, or to be judged by a distich, and perhaps considering how unhappy great poets have been in versifying their own epitaphs; wherein Petrarch, Dante, and Ariosto, have so unhappily failed, that if their tombs should outlast their works, posterity would find so little of Apollo on them as to mistake ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... surpassing loveliness, and endowed with all the attractions that the poets in all ages have given to the sex that inspires them. But this sort of creation in the mind becomes vague, and related to literature only, unless it is sustained by some reality. Even Petrarch must occasionally see Laura at the church door, and dwell upon the veiled dreamer that passed and perhaps paused a moment to regard him with sad eyes. Philip, no doubt, nursed a genuine passion, which grew into an exquisite ideal in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and descends Where he himself inspir'd the Mantuan swain, And taught Theocritus his tender strain; There, Fame reports, by ways unknown, he led The am'rous stream to Arethusa's bed. 125 Then on the downy sail he sought Vaucluse, Retreat of Petrarch's love and Petrarch's muse; Fond Echo yet remember's Laura's name; And what she gave in love repays in fame. Eure's winding shores his fond attention draw, 130 Where Love's own work, Anet's proud dome he saw; The fretted ceiling, Henry's cypher grac'd, By Love himself with fair ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Coriolanus and Julius Caesar; and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus may themselves be considered as almost literal translations into verse, of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in his consulship. Boccacio, the divine Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, and others, were familiar to our writers, and they make occasional mention of some few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas; for the French literature had ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of your poets? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante? Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine? Cieco di Hadria? I have ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... that in the time of our youth, we were friends, 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 man ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... altered condition to which politics had greatly reduced Dublin, had effected this change of opinion? or was it like that indescribable longing for the unknown something, which we read of in the pathetic history of the fair lady celebrated, I believe, by Petrarch, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... devil that Lucien pilloried in his newspaper; he is begging for mercy and peace. The Baron du Chatelet is imbecile enough to take the thing seriously. The Marquise d'Espard, Mme. de Bargeton, and Mme. de Montcornet's set have taken up the Heron's cause; and I have undertaken to reconcile Petrarch and his Laura—Mme. de ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... writings. Nobody who did not share the scholar's enthusiasm could have described the blind scholar in his library in the adorable fifth chapter of Romola; and we feel that she must have copied out with keen gusto of her own those words of Petrarch which she puts into old Bardo's mouth—'Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... Calender under the name of Rosalind, "the widow's daughter of the glen." A rival, Menalchas, was more successful in finding favor with his fair neighbor. Although he had before this turned his attention to poetry by translating the sonnets of Petrarch and Du Bellay (published in 1569), it was while here in the North country that he first showed his high poetic gifts in ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... classics imparted not only enthusiasm, but standards. An ambitious writer of the Elizabethan age must do his best to live up to Homer and Plato, to Virgil and Catullus, just as he must live up to Petrarch. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... laid aside;" boys were made archbishops; ludicrous stories were recited in the churches; the most disgraceful crimes were pardoned for money. Desolation, according to Cardinal Baronius, was seen in the temples of the Lord. As Petrarch said of Avignon in a better age, "There is no pity, no charity, no faith, no fear of God. The air, the streets, the houses, the markets, the beds, the hotels, the churches, even the altars consecrated to God, are all peopled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... see their style. With the Latin works of writers who think for themselves, the case is different, and their style is visible; writers, I mean, who have not condescended to any sort of imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others. An affectation in style is like making grimaces. Further, the language in which a man writes is the physiognomy of the nation to which he belongs; and here ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... requisites for the army, as well as the "extraction" of works of art for the benefit of French museums, at once aroused the bitterest feelings. The loss of priceless treasures, such as the manuscript of Virgil which had belonged to Petrarch, and the masterpieces of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, might perhaps have been borne: it concerned only the cultured few, and their effervescence was soon quelled by patrols of French cavalry. Far different was it with the peasants between Milan and Pavia. Drained by the white-coats, they now ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of the Courtier, Castiglione said very little about perfection of speech; he discust only the standard of literary language and the prescribed limits of the "vulgar tongue," or the Italian in which Petrarch and Boccaccio had written. What he says about grace, however, applies also to conversation: "I say that in everything it is so hard to know the true perfection as to be well-nigh impossible; and this because of the variety of opinions. Thus there are many who will like a man who ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... terraces, with a full stream of 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 coffin, of smooth Verona mandorlato, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... to attain any degree of perfection until the time of Petrarch in the fourteenth century; and its real era in Spain was not until a century later. Love poetry developed in different ways in Europe, and, as we have seen, at different times. Except among the Italians it was not so much borrowed from ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... influx of wealth, and a more settled government, may have tended to polish and soften the diction of the Provencials, whose poets, under the name of Troubadours, were the masters of the Italians, and particularly of Petrarch. Their favorite pieces were Sirventes (satirical pieces), love-songs, and Tensons, which last were a sort of dialogue in verse between two poets, who questioned each other on some refined points of loves' casuistry. It ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... refresh and wash themselves, the king, looking into the baths, saw in them men wholly naked with every garment cast off. At which he was displeased, and went away quickly, abhorring such nudity as a great offence, and not unmindful of that sentence of Francis Petrarch 'the nakedness of a beast is in men unpleasing, but the decency ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... one can well believe the anecdote told by Squarzafichi in his life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary of the poet, how once at the court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other noblemen and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his son, who was then a mere boy (he was afterwards first Duke of Milan), to pick out the wisest of the company; ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... which we will pass, is one of the meanest and filthiest in Paris, but has been cited by Petrarch, Dante and Rabelais, as in it were several of the schools where public disputations were held; the Rue Galande, the Rue des Rats, and many other dirty streets of the same description is the quarter where existed ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Cordelia out, for she helps to make my world luminous. But she must have companions; so I shall select Antigone, Evangeline, Miranda, Mary, and Martha if she can spare the time. Among the male contingent I shall want Job, Erasmus, Petrarch, Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Milton, and Burns. I want men and women in whose presence I must stand uncovered to preserve my self-respect. I want big people, wise people, and dynamic people in my world, people who will teach me how to work and how ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... genius the reading of two or three books has often provoked an immediate and striking expansion of thought and power. Samuel Johnson, a clumsy boy in his father's bookshop, searching for apples, came upon Petrarch, and was destined henceforth to be a man of letters. John Keats, apprenticed to an apothecary, read Spenser's "Epithalamium" one golden afternoon in company with his friend, Cowden Clarke, and from that hour was a poet by the grace of God. In both cases the readers ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... to his contemporaries. There is something friendly—as it were, next-door-neighbourly—about the man. If we land to-day on Iona, or stand in any of the little chapels in Donegal which bear his name, his presence seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at Ferrara or Petrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick—one is inclined to say rank—growth of miracles which at times confuse Adamnan's fine portrait of his hero—cover it thick as lichens some monumental slab of marble—we can still recognize his real lineaments underneath. His great ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... about Medea da Carpi, letters of Medea herself! Yes, Medea's own handwriting—a round, scholarly character, full of abbreviations, with a Greek look about it, as befits a learned princess who could read Plato as well as Petrarch. The letters are of little importance, mere drafts of business letters for her secretary to copy, during the time that she governed the poor weak Guidalfonso. But they are her letters, and I can imagine almost that there hangs about these moldering pieces of paper ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... sediment You have been fearfully scolded, my dear young friend, this was the bitter prose that had to be surmounted; you have surmounted it, and so now give yourself up entirely to poetry. Here—here are Petrarch's Sonnets and Ovid's Elegies; take them, read them, write yourself, and come and read to me what you have written. Perhaps in the meantime I also may experience a disappointment in love, of which I am not altogether ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... St. 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 him ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... sufficient to make Benserade, Voiture, and all other dealers in the fireworks of gallantry jealous; and at the end of the dinner, Mademoiselle Laure, having learned that he was a poet, gave him clearly to understand that she was not indisposed to accept him as her Petrarch. She even, without circumlocution, made an appointment with him for ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... danced in the Poets' Quadrille were Miss Daisy Bankshire, looking more than usually lovely as Laura, and Mr. Ronald Grew as the young Petrarch." ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... of whom Petrarch has left us a vivid portrait, a red-faced, red-bearded man, with a fringe of red hair about his tonsure, short and squat of figure, dirty in his dress and habits, yet imbued with the pride of Lucifer despite his rags, thrust himself ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... had learned the art of silence as well as of speech, was sent abroad on a series of diplomatic missions. In Italy he probably met the poet Petrarch (as we infer from the Prologue to the Clerk's Tale) and became familiar with the works of Dante and Boccaccio. His subsequent poetry shows a decided advance in range and originality, partly because of his own growth, no doubt, and partly because of his better models. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... picturesque 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 ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... to the same political party as Dante. He too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like his father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He wanted to be a scholar and a poet—and because he wanted to be ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... each hand, a row of nightingales in full chorus. This delightful bird had given me a rich treat before, at the fountain of Vaucluse. After visiting the tomb of Laura, at Avignon, I went to see this fountain—a noble one of itself, and rendered forever famous by the songs of Petrarch, who lived near it. I arrived there somewhat fatigued, and sat down by the fountain to repose myself. It gushes, of the size of a river, from a secluded valley of the mountain, the ruins of Petrarch's chateau being perched on ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... less wonderful that authors should thus misjudge their productions, when whole generations have sometimes fallen into the same sort of error. The Sonnets of Petrarch were, by the learned of his day, considered only worthy of the ballad-singers by whom they were chanted about the streets; while his Epic Poem, "Africa," of which few now even know the existence, was sought for on all sides, and the smallest fragment of it begged from ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... taken prisoner. Afterward he was attached to the court and received numerous 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
... continued vogue of the Sonnet, and its association with the names of such masters as Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Michelangelo in Italy; Ronsard in France; Camoens in Portugal; Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Rossetti in England—to say nothing of a host of minor poets, who, though one star differeth ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... diary 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 of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... course. Estelle thrilled at the thought of these moments, and from time to time she slightly stretched the elastic of the path of duty to meet them. They would still keep on it, of course; they would never go any further than Petrarch and Laura. These historic philanderers should be their limit, and when the worst came to the worst, Estelle would softly murmur to Lionel, "Petrarch and Laura have borne it, and ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Heaven, ma'am, they'll immortalize you—you'll be handed down to Posterity, like Petrarch's Laura, or Waller's Sacharissa. ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Petrarch was a book-loving poet, and he is said to have met the book-loving ecclesiastic Richard de Bury at Rome. He gave his library to the Church of St. Mark at Venice in 1362; but the guardians allowed the books ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... d'oeuvre, and is more highly valued than pictures of a far larger size, even though they might be from the hands of a Rubens or a Tintoret. In literature, is Beranger less a great poet, because he has condensed his thoughts within the narrow limits of his songs? Does not Petrarch owe his fame to his Sonnets? and among those who most frequently repeat their soothing rhymes, how many know any thing of the existence of his long poem on Africa? We cannot doubt that the prejudice which would deny the superiority ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... no means well suited to rub shoulders together; and sciences must include arts, which are but country cousins to them, or a new compartment must be established for their accommodation. Once more, how to cope with the everlasting difficulty of 'Works'? In what category to place Dante, Petrarch, Swedenborg, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, or a hundred more? Where, again, is Poetry to stand? I apprehend that it must take its place, the first place without doubt, in Art; for while it is separated from Painting and her other 'sphere-born harmonious sisters' by their greater dependence ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... at the moon's pale loveliness, I dreamed the deathless dreams of long-dead poets and romancers, wherein were the notes of dreamy lutes, the soft whisper of trailing garments, and sighing voices that called beneath the breath. Between Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice came one as proud and gracious and beautiful as they, deep-bosomed, broad-hipped, with a red, red mouth, and a subtle witchery of the eyes. I dreamed of nymphs and satyrs, of fauns and dryads, and of the young Endymion who, on just ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... eminence as well in literature as politics; Gower, Occleve, Lidgate, Wickliffe were great admirers, and particular friends of Chaucer; besides he was well acquainted with foreign poets, particularly Francis Petrarch the famous Italian poet, and refiner of the language. A Revolution in England soon after this happened, in which we find Chaucer but little concerned; he made no mean compliments to Henry IV, but Gower his cotemporary, though then very old, flattered ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... of the experience of such a passion," Malbone went on, unheeding, "nobody comprehends Petrarch. Philosophers and sensualists all refuse to believe that his dream of Laura went on, even when he had a mistress and a child. Why not? Every one must have something to which his dreams can cling, amid the degradations of actual life, and this tie is more real than the degradation; ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... performed for Goton. All 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... no wisdom 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 ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 blood to obtain. This Corilla may bribe ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the East, manufactures, banking, all flourished; and even the philosophies, with law, science, and literature, began to be studied. The spirit of learning showed itself in the founding of schools and universities. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, reflecting respectively religion, classic learning, and the inclination toward nature, lived and gave indication of the trend of thought. Finally the arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, began to stir and take ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... popularly elected magistrates, holding the scarlet old lady 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
... with their improved 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 classical tongue ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... death is a landmark in the spiritual history of Europe. Behind him lies that which, taken with the Divina Commedia, has won for Italy an exaggerated literary reputation. In the thirteenth century there was plenty of poetry hardly inferior to the Lamento of Rinaldo; in the fourteenth comes Petrarch with the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so he might live and die among his books," says Geikie. "No wonder Petrarch was among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. It seems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitz should have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at his desk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... against physicians who showed a talent for investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... palace of Aix-la-Chapelle was decorated with the marbles of Ravenna and Rome. Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a king of Sicily, Robert—the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the age—was supplied with the same materials by the easy navigation of the Tiber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint that the ancient capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... audacity, long exercised over Chaucer's mind the same dominant influence which it possessed over most secular poets of the age. Chaucer's second period, that of Italian influence, dates from his first visit to Italy in 1372-3, where at Padua he may perhaps have met the fluent Italian poet Petrarch, and where at any rate the revelation of Italian life and literature must have aroused his intense enthusiasm. From this time, and especially after his other visit to Italy, five years later, he made much direct use of the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... fancy the class called up as Eros administers, with zest, his penalties. Master Paris! for loving his neighbor a little less than himself, and his neighbor's wife a little more. Master Lancelot! ditto. Masters Petrarch, Tristram, Antony, Juan Tenorio, Dante Alighieri, and others! ditto. There are a great many called up for this particular form of peccancy, you observe; even Master David has to lay aside his Psalm ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... medival scholasticism and asceticism display itself more strikingly than in the joyful enthusiasm which marked the pursuit of classic studies. The long-neglected treasures of classic literature were reopened, almost rediscovered, in the fourteenth century by the immortal trio—Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The joy of living, the hitherto forbidden delight in beauty and pleasure for their own sakes, the exultant awakening to the sense of personal freedom, which came with the bursting ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... take upon myself to say that Landor was without humour; he has certainly a delicate gracefulness which may be classed with the finer kinds of humour; but if anybody (to take one instance) will read the story which Chaucer tells to Boccaccio and Petrarch and pronounce it to be amusing, I can only say that his notions of humour differ materially from mine. Some of his wrathful satire against kings and priests has a vigour which is amusing; but the tact which enables him to avoid errors of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 sunshine and a good ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... importance of his work, a conception sometimes exaggerated, but becoming, as the century progressed, clearly and truly defined. Between the lines of the dedication which Henry Parker, Lord Morley, prefixes to his translation of Petrarch's Triumphs,[259] one reads a pathetic story of an appreciation which can hardly have equaled the hopes of the author. He writes of "one of late days that was groom of the chamber with that renowned and valiant prince of high memory, Francis the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... sincere and profound. He 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 other'; ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... case. Further, even when the college is prepared to teach these subjects adequately, it is still a debatable question whether they are entitled to precisely the same consideration as their more venerable sister. It is unnecessary to point out that such great names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Alfieri, Leopardi, Carducci, Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Benavente, e tutti quanti, are abundant evidence of the value of Italian and Spanish culture. They unquestionably are. Where the emphasis is cultural, it would certainly be unwise to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... to by beasts, indeed, 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
... VARRO (B.C. 116-28) whom Quintilian called "the most learned of the Romans," and Petrarch "il terzo gran lume Romano," ranking him with Cicero and Virgil, probably studied agriculture before he studied any thing else, for he was born on a Sabine farm, and although of a well to do family, was ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... elevation of feeling connected with the scene which it is impossible to describe. Such moments are worth whole years of everyday existence. We turned our heads to look once more on a man who must always create the most intense interest, and I repeated those lines of Petrarch, introduced by Mr. Beckford himself in his "Italy" on a ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will teach you many things—develop you. We will read Sorel together he is beautiful, like poetry—and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and Tasso—yes, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their plays tragical, but practically all other expositions of the poet's double affections are likewise tragic. Cale Young Rice chooses another famous Renaissance lover for the hero of A Night in Avignon, a play with this theme. Here Petrarch, in a fit of impatience with his long loyalty to a hopeless love for Laura, turns to a light woman for consolation. According to the accepted mode, he refuses to tolerate Laura's name on the lips of his ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... romance, (Which I have lost by grievous chance,) The one dear woman that I love, Beside me in our seaside nook, Closed a white finger in her book, Half-vexed that she should read, and weep For Petrarch, to a man asleep. And scorning me, so tame and cold, She rose, and wandered down the shore, Her wine-dark drapery, fold in fold, Imprisoned by an ivory hand; And on a ridge of granite, half in sand, She stood, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... necessarily of the party. And then I began, as men will, to take the lead. Aurelia had exhausted her little store when she had named Giotto and Dante: I took her further afield. We read the Commentaries of Villani, Malavolti's History of Siena, the Triumphs of Petrarch, his Sonnets (fatal pap for young lovers), the Prince of Machiavelli, the Epics of Pulci and Bojardo, and Ariosto's dangerously honeyed pages. Here Aurelia was content to follow me, and I found teaching her to be as sweet in the mouth as learning of her had ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... particular it gave to women a more honourable position than they had occupied in any social system of antiquity. It rediscovered one half of human nature. But for chivalry the Beatrice of Dante, the Laura of Petrarch, Shakespeare's Miranda and Goethe's Marguerite, could not have been ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... "How about 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 patrons, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... 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 in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... genius is then diametrically opposite to that which prevails on the first origin of arts. The Italian writers, it is evident, even the most celebrated, have not reached the proper simplicity of thought and composition; and in Petrarch, Tasso, Guarini, frivolous witticisms and forced conceits are but too predominant. The period during which letters were cultivated in Italy was so short, as scarcely to allow leisure for correcting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Horace, to whom there are references in all his works, and from whom he enriched his philosophy of life. Even his greatest and most original creation, the Canzoniere, is not without marks of Horace, and their fewness here, as well as their character, are a sign that Petrarch's familiarity was not of the artificial sort, but based on real assimilation of the poet. His letter to ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... together we strolled to the river-side along that embankment, the favourite walk of Dante and of Petrarch, of Raphael and of Michelangelo. All was silent, for the great ponderous palaces lining the river were closed till winter, and there ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... benefices. A good example of the light and dainty verse in which Desportes excelled is furnished by the well-known villanelle with the refrain "Qui premier s'en repentira," which was on the lips of Henry, duke of Guise, just before his tragic death. Desportes was above all an imitator. He imitated Petrarch, Ariosto, Sannazaro, and still more closely the minor Italian poets, and in 1604 a number of his plagiarisms were exposed in the Rencontres des Muses de France et d'ltalie. As a sonneteer he showed much grace and sweetness, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Metastasio, and Goldoni, demonstrate that modern Italy has successfully cultivated the dramatic as well as the epic muse; the tragedies of the first are worthy the country of Tasso, the operas of the second rival the charms of Petrarch. In the Spanish peninsula, Lope de Vega and Calderon have astonished the world by the variety and prodigality of their conceptions;[J] and fully vindicated the title of the Castilians to place their dramatic writers on a level with their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... named Soldan, and later at the Royal Academy in Venice. She made copies of Guido, Sassoferrato and Veronese, the Laokoon group, and the Hercules of Canova, and executed a much-admired bas-relief called "Love and Innocence." Among her original paintings are an "Atala and Chactas," "Petrarch's First Meeting with Laura," a "Descent from the Cross" for the church at Tribano, a "St. Sebastian," "Melancholy," a "St. Ciro," and many Madonnas. Her pictures are noble in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... of the Muses, the plagiarisms of Petrarch, the wonders of astrology. Her uneasiness revived. In a voice more musical than the rota in the gallery, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the city of Arezzo, on a hill at the other end of the plain, its heavy cathedral crowning the pyramidal mass of buildings. Our first care was to find a good trattoria, for hunger spoke louder than sentiment, and then we sought the house where Petrarch was born. A young priest showed it to us on the summit of the hill. It has not been changed since he ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... most enduring of French writers, who has stirred to their best efforts 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, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson |
