Essays on Petrarch Author:Ugo Foscolo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A PARALLEL BETWEEN DANTE AND PETRARCH. L UN DISPOSTO A PATIRE E L ALTRO A FARE. Dante, Purg. c. xxv, I. The excess of erudition in the age of Leo ... more »the Tenth, carried the refinements of criticism so far as even to prefer elegance of taste to boldness of genius. The laws of the Italian language were thus deduced, and the models of poetry selected exclusively from the works of Petrarch; who being then proclaimed superior to Dante, the sentence remained, until our times, unreversed. Petrarch himself mingles Dante indiscriminately with others eclipsed by his own fame— Ma ben ti prego, che in la terza spera, Guitton saluti, e Messer Cino, e Dante, Franceschin nostro, e tutta quella shiera. Cosi or quinci, or quindi rimirando Vidi in una fiorita e verde piaggia Gente che d' Amor givan ragionando. Ecco Dante, e Beatrice: ecco Selvaggia, Ecco Cin da Pistoja; Guitton d' Arezzo ; Ecco i due Guidi che gia furo in prezzo; Onesto Bolognese, e i Siciliani.— Trionf. c. 4. Salute, I pray thee, in the sphere of love, Guitton. my master Cino, Dante too, Our Franceschin, all that blest band above. Thus while my gazing eyes around me rove, I saw upon a slope of flowery green Many that held their sweet discourse of love: Here Dante and his Beatrice, there were seen Selvaggia and Cino of Pistoia; there Guitton the Aretine; and the high-priz'd pair, The Guidi; and Onesto these among, And all the masters of Sicilian song. Milman. Boccacio, discouraged by the reputation of these two great masters, determined to burn his own poetry. Petrarch diverted him from this purpose, writing with a tone of humility somewhat inconsistent with the character of a man who was not naturally a hypocrite. " You are a philosopher and a christian," says he, " and yet you ...« less