FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
71
aonatunl to a human being, and reproached him for his unsocial mode of life. Petrarch smiled at their messages, and scorned their re- proaches, and made the following excellent lenurts : — " These people consider the pleasures of the world as their supreme good, and not to be loiounced. But I have friends of a very dif- ferent description, whose society is far more asTwable to me; they are of all countries, and of all ages; they are distinguished in war, in politics, and in the sciences. It is very easy to see them; they are always at my service. I call for their company, or send them away whenever I please; they are never troublesome, and im- mediately answer all my questions. Some idate the events of ages past, others reveal the secrets of nature; these teach me how to live in oomfort, those to die in quiet. In return for all these services, they only require a chamber of me in one comer of my mansion, where they may lepose in peace."
An anecdote of Petmrch is mentioned by two anthois, that he wrote occasionally his thoughts, in gilt letters, upon a cloak of leather, which he wore, and not being lined, was so contrived that he might be able to write on both sides of it his verses, which appeared full of corrections and notes. It is said, that La Casa, Sadolet, and Bnccatello, who were in possession of this precious idic, when they returned to the country-house of the latter to take refuge from the plague, which in this year, was desolating Italy, took this cloak with them, to consider it at their leisure, and to attempt to decipher what it contained.
Pwiarch died of apoplexy, at Arg^a. He ■as found dead in his library, Julv 18th, 1374, with one arm leaning on a book. Petrarch, hiti Woodhonslee observes, composed 318 sonnets, 59 canzoni or songs, and six trionfi, a lir^ volume of poetry, entireljr on the subject of his passion for Laura; not to mclude a variety ofjHffiages in prose works. Laura died in 1348, and was buried at Avignon. Her grave was opened by Francis I. of France, wherein was found a small box, containing a medal and a few Toscs, written by Petrarch. On one side of the msM was impressed the figure of a woman; on the reverse, the characters of M. L. M. J., signifying Madona Laura morte jaeet. The pliant and enthusiastic monarch returned every Uiing into the tomb, and wTote an epitaph in honour of her memory.
"AiiM, O Petiarcb, from th' Elrsiui bowers. With never-fullngr myitles twiii'd. And tngmtt yeith unbtoaial flowers, Wbere to thy Laura thoa again art Jolii'd j Ailse, and hither bring the silver lyre,
Tno'd by thy slUUnl hand. To the soft notes o( elegant desire.
With which o'er many a land Wss spread the fame of thy disastrous love."
Lord LfHMtm.
Petrarch is wonderfully accurate and precise about Laura. These are his words: — "Laura, ■Oostrious by the virtues she possessed, and celebrated, during many years, by my verses, appeared to my eyes, for the first time, on the eth day of April, in the year 1327, at Avignon,
in the Church of Saint Clare, at six o'clock in the morning. I was then in my early youth. In the same town, on the same day, and at the same hour, in the year 1348, this light, this sun, withdrew from the world."
The works of this illustrious poet form four folio volumes, and more than twenty-five persons have written his life.
Tuscus, one of the preceptors of Petrarch, provided for the payment of his debts, by pledg- ing two small manuscript volumes of certain works of Cicero.
1345, April 14. Died Richard Aungerville, commonly known by the name of Richard de Bury, from the place of his nativity, Bury St. Edmund's, in Suffolk, were he was m>m in the year 1287. He was the son of Sir Richard Aungerville. Having distinguished himself by his learning at Oxford, he became tutor to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. In 1333 he was appointed dean of Wells and bishop of Durham; and in the following year, he was appointed lord high chancellor and treasurer of England. He was much celebrated for his piety and munificence, but still more for his remarkable love of learning and patronage of distinguished scholars, by whom he was held as the &fiecena8 of those times. In 1341, he purchased thirty or forty volumes of the abbot of St. Albans, for which he gave fifty pounds weight of silver; and so enamoured was he of his large collection that in 1344 he expressly composed a treatise entitled PhiloJnhlion, or the Love of Books.* Richard de Bury may be fairly classed as the first biblioma- niac upon record, m the best and wisest sense of the word, not only in the North of England, hut in England at large. Describing the process by which manuscripts were published in his days, he says " Because every thing that is serviceable to mortals, suffers the waste of mortality through the lapse of time, it is necessary for volumes corroded by age to be restored or renovated by successors, that perpetuity, repugnant to the na- ture of the individual, may be conceded to the species." in another place he says, " the study of the monks, now a days, dispenses with emptying bowls, not with amending books." Speaking of his books, he uses the following excellent and impressive words, " these are teachers, whose in- structions are unaccompanied with blows or harsh words; who demtmd neither food nor wages: you visit them, they are alert; if you want them, they secreie not themselves; should you mistake their meaning, they complain not; nor ridicule your ignorance, be it ever so gross." Again, he says, " books ought to be purchased at any price, the wisdom which they contain renders them invaluable, they cannot be bought too dear." He bought books at any price, but never sold them
- Heame has undertaken to deprive Richard de Bury
of the honour of composing this woric, and says it wa*
written by Robert Holket, a domiDican, under his oaroe.
Robert Hollict was born at Northampton, became a dominicau and professor of divinity at Oxford. He died In 1349, and left many valuable works, which were printed at Paris by Oering and Rembolt.
The PkUoiiiluM was reprinted at Oxford from a colla- tion of mannsoipt*, and with an Appendix, itw, 4to.
