"Petrarch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wonderful charm that belongs to everything connected with their lovely land. They are seen, like the early Tuscan paintings, against a golden background of romance. Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, invested with this magic light, are themselves more attractive even than their poetic creations. But Torquato Tasso, perhaps, more than them all, appeals to our deepest feelings. No sadder or more romantic life than his can be found in the annals of literature. He was ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... observe their physiognomy too; he cannot 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 there are many hard and fast differences, ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... visitors' attention to illuminated missals, old MSS., early books and so forth. One of Galileo's fingers, stolen from his body, used to be kept here, in a glass case, and may be here still; but I did not see it. I saw, however, the portraits, in an old volume, of Petrarch and his Laura. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... in a sorry sonnet! Nine in ten of our modern examples in this kind, when one comes to analyze them, will be found to consist of stolen ideas, combined with what SOUTHEY would call 'bubble, and bladder, and tympany.' But perpend the subjoined: 'Ever since the fatal days of PETRARCH AND GUIDO CAVALIANTI, mankind have suffered more or less from the chronic infliction of Sonnets. With them indeed the complaint was constitutional, and came in the natural way; under so mild and gentle a form withal, that little danger was to be apprehended for Italian temperaments, except a ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... memory. In referring to this affair, which gave a tender aspect to Irving's subsequent career, and in fact changed its whole tenor, we may remark that the loves of literary men form a most interesting and, in some cases, moving history. Some, like Petrarch, Earl Surrey, Burns, and Byron, have embalmed the objects of their affection in the effusions of their muse, while others have bequeathed that duty to others. Shakspeare says but little about his sweetheart, while Milton, who was decidedly unsuccessful in matters of the heart, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... very 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 prodigious; and, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of Petrarch, and he heard them still, though muffled, for a moment or two after the boy had gone. Then it ceased abruptly, and a pause followed, at the end of which the page returned. Raising the portiere of blue and gold, he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... was by 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 came ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... 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 year of the new century, the ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... 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
... been developed, and do not, consequently, stand in the way of this caprice. In Homer we find several examples of it; the Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are, as is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, like Petrarch, or orators, like Cicero, have delighted in them. Whoever, in Richard the Second, is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, should remember that the same thing ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... time, believe me, he had no thought of harm or wrong; he never dreamed of being in love with Lady Amelie. What was she to him? His queen, his lode-star, his inspiration to all that was great and glorious, the Lama to his Petrarch; but of anything less exalted, he had no notion. Basil Carruthers, with all his eccentricity, would have shuddered at the bare notion of dishonorable love or sin. He was an enthusiast, a dreamer, a poet in heart and soul, ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... John de Newton, the church treasurer, bequeathed to the Chapter a number of books, including Bibles, commentaries, and patristical and historical works, as well as Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae.[1] They were chained to the library desks, and were guarded with horn and studs, to protect them from the consequences of careless ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Daphne's lover here first wore the bays, Eurotas' secret streams heard all his lays, And holy Orpheus, Nature's busy child, By headlong Hebrus his deep hymns compil'd; Soft Petrarch—thaw'd by Laura's flames—did weep On Tiber's banks, when she—proud fair!—could sleep; Mosella boasts Ausonius, and the Thames Doth murmur Sidney's Stella to her streams; While Severn, swoln with joy and sorrow, wears Castara's smiles mix'd with fair Sabrin's tears. Thus poets—like the nymphs, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... dithyrambic—not just yet. I was so sure of my man that it seemed quite worth while to tumble out at Avignon—a place I had never inspected—and fool away another spell among Roman remains, and Petrarch and the rival Popes, and the opening scenes of the Revolution, and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... stretches itself along the slopes of the Perugian hills, 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 especial delight in ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... 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
... of peace 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
... 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
... books on the table by my bed, such as Petrarch, Ariosto, Horace. "The Military' Philosopher" (a manuscript which Mathilde had given me), "The Porter of Chartreux," and "The Aretin," which Manuzzi had also denounced, for Messer-Grande asked me for it by name. This spy, Manuzzi, had all the appearance ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 in the vanishing corridors ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 Mall, in 1834. The bard, after ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... poem. Lamartine wrote among other things: "A great epic poet is born! A true Homeric poet in our own time; a poet, born like the men of Deucalion, from a stone on the Crau, a primitive poet in our decadent age; a Greek poet at Avignon; a poet who has created a language out of a dialect, as Petrarch created Italian; one who, out of a vulgar patois, has made a language full of imagery and harmony delighting the imagination and the ear.... We might say that, during the night, an island of the Archipelago, a floating Delos, has parted ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... were 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 patience that she had not intended ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... munificent establishment of the bards left them at liberty freely to indulge. While the mind is enduring the torments of fear, despair or hope, its effusions cannot be gay. The greater number of the productions of those amorous poets, Tibullus, Catullus, Petrarch and Hammond, are elegiac. The subject of their songs is always love, and they seem to understand poetry to be designed for no other purpose than to stir up that passion in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... contains a 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 ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... as his worth deserved, for in his life he was beloved by everyone, and especially by distinguished men of every profession. Besides Dante, of whom we have spoken above, he and his works were highly esteemed by Petrarch, who in his will left to Signor Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua, among other things which were held in the greatest veneration, a Madonna by Giotto's hand, as a rare thing, and the gift most worthy to be offered to him. The words of this part of the will ran thus:—Transeo ad dispositionem ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... renaissance, which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, 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 spring from within through some spirit informing ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... vulgarity must evaporate in order that the pure poetic unhappiness of love may settle as 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 deprived of hopes, since I shall in ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... sort of map or 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 of generous friendship. His sitting chamber ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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 ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... abreast of the epic or lyric muse. The names of Alfieri, 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
... conception of the 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 French king, whose name ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... medium, 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 ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Virginis, by the same printer, in 1527, 12mo.: in old stamped binding—but somewhat cropt. The leaves of both copies crackle lustily on turning them over. These, also, from the Weingarth monastery. I noticed a beautiful little Petrarch of 1546, 8vo. with the commentary of Velutellus; having a striking device of Neptune in the frontispiece: but no membranaceous articles, of this character and period, came across ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Greece,—conquered, fascinated, charmed, from 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... their enthusiasm. In vain the guide-book told them about Petrarch and Laura. The usual raptures were not forthcoming. In vain the cicerone led them through the old papal palace. Its sombre walls awakened no emotion. The only effect produced was on the Senator, who whiled away the hours of early bed-time by ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... 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, sixteen years before ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... 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 ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... in a more cheerful tone. Holding a volume of Petrarch in his hand, he touched lightly, but with grace, on Italian poetry; then diverged into his travels, recounted an adventure with sprightliness, and replied to Miss Temple's lively remarks with gaiety and readiness. The morning advanced; Miss Temple closed her portfolio ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of your poets? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante? Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine? Cieco di Hadria? ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... novel 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; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... from 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 ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... power of the genius of Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half-dozen of his stanzas, an humble dairy servant—else unheard of outside her parish and forgotten at her death—is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of enamoured bards; readers ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... quitted England in December, visited Genoa and Florence, and returned to England before the end of November 1373 — for on that day he drew his pension from the Exchequer in person. The most interesting point connected with this Italian mission is the question, whether Chaucer visited Petrarch at Padua. That he did, is unhesitatingly affirmed by the old biographers; but the authentic notices of Chaucer during the years 1372-1373, as shown by the researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, are confined to the facts already ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... on the one wall, to the same rank as the 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 their wisdom from heaven itself, in the vision of Gibeon,[37] ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... 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
... 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 our ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... old 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
... failed 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 ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... a Persian, Jean Althen, who in 1765 introduced the culture of the madder plant, which long formed the staple and is still an important branch of local trade. In 1873 John Stuart Mill died at Avignon, and is buried in the cemetery. For the connexion of Petrarch ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... 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
... by Ugo Foscolo, in English, and accompanied the Essays on Petrarch, in the edition of that work which was printed for private circulation. It was omitted when the volume was subsequently published, and is ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... his roe, like a dried herring.—O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!—Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench,—marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her; Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gypsy; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots; Thisbe, a gray eye or so, but ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... good reason to believe that the very greatness of his most exalted mind, aiming at more than could be effected, was itself an impediment; perpetually seeking to add excellence to excellence and perfection to perfection. This was without doubt the true hindrance, so that, as our Petrarch has it, the work was retarded by desire." At the close of that cynical and positive century, the spirit whereof was so well expressed by Cosimo de' Medici,[251] Lionardo set before himself aims infinite instead ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... in the old Burgundy, and Trombin proposed the health of the bride, repeating in her honour one of Petrarch's sonnets in praise of Laura. He said that as he had never seen her he could only compare her beauty to that of the angels, and her virtues to those of the blessed saints, whom he had not seen either, and had no expectation of seeing hereafter; similarly he likened ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Aristophanes really liked AEschylus or only pretended to do so. It must be remembered that the claims of AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to the foremost place amongst tragedians were held to be as incontrovertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto to be the greatest of Italian poets, are held among the Italians of to-day. If we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in Florence, finding himself bored by all the poets I have named, we can yet believe he would be unwilling ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... 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 to acquire a tenfold interest. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... whom the sun of Italy could not save;—and next, one who perished suddenly, like Miss Bathurst, in the very bud and bloom of existence,—or another, who died away, day after day, in the embraces of her parents, and now rests in the midst of the beautiful in vain. The graceful lines of Petrarch are inscribed on the sarcophagus—they are full of feeling and the country, and make ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... always remember Petrarch's invocation to Rienzi. Mazzini comes at a riper period in the world's history, with the same energy of soul, but of purer temper and more ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... too much about her. She needn't even know how he felt. To idolise her from a distance would be quite delightful enough. When a passion is not realised, he thought, it fades away, or becomes ideal worship —Dante—Petrarch—that sort of thing! It could never fade away in this case, he was sure. How pretty she was, how lovely her mouth was when she smiled! She had no prejudices, apparently; no affectations; how she played ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... that thought. Don't fancy that people are only better because they are in love, but they are greater, bolder, brighter, more daring in danger, and more ready in every emergency. So wonder-working is the real passion that even in the base mockery of Love men have risen to genius. Look what it made Petrarch, and I might say Byron too, though he never loved worthy ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... dry, My Petrarch quite a pill, Cut Fancy for Philosophy, Tom Moore for Mr. Mill; And belles may read, and beaux may write, I care not who or how; I burnt my album Sunday night,— I'm not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... afterwards he published "The Decameron," the title being derived from the Greek words signifying "ten days." This collection of a hundred stories is certainly one of the world's great books. Many English writers of the first order have gone to it for inspiration. Boccaccio's friend, Petrarch, was so delighted with the tale of Griselda, with which the work concludes, that he learnt it off by heart. Chaucer developed it into the finest of all his stories. Dryden, Keats, and Tennyson have also been inspired by Boccaccio; while Lessing has made the Italian story-teller's allegory ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... 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 by the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... (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 bred in the habits of simplicity and rural industry with which the poets have made that ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... 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 ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 over a dungheap from which arises, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... of Barcelona (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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... are rich in radiating force, not only exerting power, but communicating and even creating it. Thus Dante raised and drew after him a host of great spirits—Petrarch, Boccacio, Tasso, and many more. From him Milton learnt to bear the stings of evil tongues and the contumely of evil days; and long years after, Byron, thinking of Dante under the pine-trees of Ravenna, was incited to attune his ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... hadn't you better get it from her at a safe distance? Petrarch didn't see half as much of Laura, nor Dante of Beatrice, as you see of Ann now; and yet they wrote first-rate poetry—at least so I'm told. They never exposed their idolatry to the test of domestic familiarity; and it lasted them to their graves. Marry ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 at the headstrong passions of Benevenuto Cellini, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... 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," ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... such as Nature made her,—that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family, had they possessed that accomplishment,—that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor Lucretia, nor Joan of Arc, nor Petrarch's Laura, nor the daughters of Charlemagne, nor the three hundred and sixty-five wives of Mohammed;—but that Sappho and Madame de Maintenon could read altogether too well, while the case of Saint Brigitta, who brought forth twelve children and twelve books, was clearly exceptional, and afforded ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make a good wife; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne? Nay, did even the more practical Waverley ever think it of the impassioned Flora? Would it not weaken faith in their romantic passages, if you believed it? ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... 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 slothful luxury ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... literary obligations in an 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 has ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... 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 ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Petrarch observes, that we change language, habits, laws, customs, manners, but not vices, not diseases, not the symptoms of folly and madness—they are still the same. And as a river, we see, keeps the like name and place, but not water, and yet ever runs, our times and persons alter, vices are ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... it or no, or indeed whether [says Mr. Gosse] the fact has ever been observed, I know not, but the true analogy of the Odes is with the Italian lyric of the early Renaissance. It is in the writings of Petrarch and Dante, and especially in the Canzoniere of the former, that we must look for examples of the source of Patmore's ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... became quite easy 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 reading an Italian author under ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 the amusement of the school children. One ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Italian, and these are the sonnets of Petrarch, my child. The edition is a fine one, so be careful." Friedrich went back to his place, sighing heavily. After a while ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... minstrels and poets. The famous Aurelio Brandolini, who died in 1497, was wont to improvise to the strains of the lute during banquets in the Vatican and in Lucretia's palace. Caesar's favorite, Serafino of Aquila, the Petrarch of his age, who died in Rome in the year 1500, still a young man, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... step was 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 fonts were ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... 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 "which should be more a practical illustration ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... will soon be flown: Our Cambridge wit resumes his gown: Our English Petrarch trundles down To Devon's valley: Why, when our Maga's out of town, Stand shilly-shally? The table-talk of London still Shall serve for chat by rock and rill, And you again may have your fill Of season'd mirth, But not if spade your chamber drill Six ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... glorious or however paternal, had grown in Alfieri with every journey he had made through France, Spain, Germany, Russia—with every sojourn in England; it had grown with every page of Livy and Tacitus, with every line of Dante and Petrarch which he had read; it had grown with every word that he himself had written. He had determined to be the poet who should make men ashamed of being slaves and ashamed of being tyrants. But he was himself the subject of the little military despotism of ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... train of lords and ladies 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 sonnets ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... profane 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 ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... is always when he comes back to some refrain, as in the French Revolution of the sea-green. In this instance, it was Petrarch and Laura, the last word pronounced with his ineffable sarcasm of drawl. Although he said this over fifty times, I could not help laughing when Laura would come. Carlyle running his chin out when he spoke it, and his eyes glancing till they looked like the eyes and ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... Muses graced with her presence." There's for you, Mary! But jokes apart, I do love Italian; it is, it must be the natural language of poetry; the sentiments are so exquisitely lovely, the language, the words, as if framed to receive them—music dwells in every line. Petrarch, Tasso, Dante, all are open to me now, and I luxuriate even in the anticipation of the last,—but how I am digressing. That night mamma followed me to my room, as I retired to bed, and smiling, almost laughing, at the half terror of my countenance ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... 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
... 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 ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... 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 too ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... the troubadours provided Italy and other countries also with perfect models of poetical form. The sonnet, the terza rima and any other form used by Dante are of Provencal origin. And what is true of Dante and his Beatrice is no less true of Petrarch and his Laura and of many another who may be sought in histories specially devoted ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... 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 the end of this period, he was in possession of a ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... that 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 as ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... point at once, and 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
... 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
... 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 Book, and go forward with ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... 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 brooding of a poetic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... He was to the last fascinated by her, so much so that, after she left him, when I persuaded him to quit Paris, he insisted on going to Avignon and Vaucluse, because Petrarch had been under the same sort of fascination, and Wharton thought himself the only man in the world who could understand Petrarch. If you want to insult him and make him bitterly hate you, tell him that Laura was a married ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... studio 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 and outside it, of ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... whether that cauldron of brick, the Santo, bubbling with silver domes, is the stem or flower of their exaltation; whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the wrench, I know not—but the fact is that the people of Padua have been as freakish a race as any in Italy; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the 'Gothic night'. Happily neither the great artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries nor the great poets of England and Spain were much affected by the classical pedantry of which unhappily Petrarch was ...
— Progress and History • Various
... tree had been planted by the owner of the garden to mark the spot. He had heard the story of Laura, and recollected many particulars of it; but still he had not been at the pains to have the spot cleared, and the tomb exposed to view. To any one who was acquainted with the story of Petrarch, or who had perused his impassioned effusions, the dilapidation of this church, and the barbarous concealment of Laura's tomb, were most mortifying circumstances. But, neither the memory of Laura, nor of the brave Crillon, whose tomb is also here, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... away, by no means dissatisfied with his house. By its association with his sojourns in Italy it recalled visits to other shrines, and they had to own that it was really no worse than Ariosto's house at Ferrara, or Petrarch's at Arqua, or Michelangelo's at Florence. "But what I admire," he said, "is our futility in going to see it. We expected to surprise some quality of the man left lying about in the house because he lived and died in it; and because his wife kept him up so close ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... literatures were brought into contact with each other only through the instrumentality of Jews. Not quite half a century after the expulsion of Jews from Portugal and their settlement in Italy, a Jew, Solomon Usque, made a Spanish translation of Petrarch (1567), dedicated to Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, and wrote Italian ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... King of Scots, and all the magnates north of the Trent, together with a multitude of nobles and many others, were present at his enthronization. It is noteworthy that during his stay at Avignon, probably in 1330, he made the acquaintance of Petrarch, who has left us a brief account of their intercourse. In 1332 Richard visited Cambridge, as one of the King's commissioners, to inquire into the state of the King's Scholars there, and perhaps then ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... am to be a sort of lay figure for your poetry, as well as your painting; the Laura of this new Petrarch. Thank you! (She ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... 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 a rock two hundred feet ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted, not so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive, and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For some time after leaving Avignon you jog along the level country between avenues of plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds |
