kept it until next day or the day after, just long magician. You would fancy that, as Horace with enough to render it unpalatable. He then turned his head, he was about to smite the stars with it over in the platter, smelt at it closer, although it. There is ne'er such another cat in the parish; the news of its condition came undeniably from a distance, touched it with his forefinger, solicited a testimony from the gills which the eyes had contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it for a present to somebody else. Were I a lover of trout as Raffaellino was, I think I should have taken an opportunity of enjoying it while the pink and crimson were glittering on it. Petrarca. Trout, yes. Boccaccio. And all other fish I could encompass. Petrarca. O thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such slyness in thee: proof enough I had almost forgotten thee. Boccaccio. Listen! listen! I fancied I caught a footstep in the passage. Come nearer; bend your head lower, that I may whisper a word in your ear. Never let Assunta hear you sigh. She is mischievous she may have been standing at the door not that I believe she would be guilty of any such impropriety: but who knows what girls are capable of! She has no malice, only in laughing; and a sigh sets her windmill at work, van over van, incessantly. : and he knows it, a rogue! We have rare repasts together in the bean-and-bacon time, although in regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher of Samos; but after due examination. In cleanliness he is a very nun; albeit in that quality which lies between cleanliness and godliness, there is a smack of Fra Biagio about him. What is that book in your hand? Petrarca. My breviary. Boccaccio. Well, give me mine too.. there, on the little table in the corner, under the glass of primroses. We can do nothing better. Petrarca. What prayer were you looking for! let me find it. Boccaccio. I don't know how it is: I am scarcely at present in a frame of mind for it. We are of one faith: the prayers of the one will do for the other and I am sure, if you omitted my name, you would say them all over afresh. I wish you could recollect in any book as dreamy a thing to entertain me as I have been just repeating. We have had enough of Dante: I believe few of his beauties have escaped us: and small Petrarca. I should soon check her. I have no faults, which we readily pass by, are fitter for small notion... Boccaccio. After all, she is a good girl. . a trifle of the wilful. She must have it that many things are hurtful to me.. reading in particular it makes people so odd, Tina is a small matter of the madcap .. in her own particular way but exceedingly discreet, I do assure you, if they will only leave her alone. I find I was mistaken, there was nobody. Boccaccio. No such thing. I order him over to Certaldo while the birds are laying and sitting: and he knows by experience, favourite as he is, that it is of no use to come back before he is sent for. Since the first impetuosities of youth, he has rarely been refractory or disobliging. We have lived together now these five years, unless I miscalculate; and he seems to have learnt something of my manners, wherein violence and enter prise by no means predominate. I have watched him looking at a large green lizard; and, their eyes being opposite and near, he has doubted whether it might be pleasing to me if he began the attack; and their tails on a sudden have touched one another at the decision. Petrarca. Seldom have adverse parties felt the same desire of peace at the same moment, and none ever carried it more simultaneously and promptly into execution. Boccaccio. He enjoys his otium cum dignitate at Certaldo: there he is my castellan, and his chase is unlimited in those domains. After the doom of relegation is expired, he comes hither at midsummer. And then if you could see his joy! His eyes are as deep as a well, and as clear as a fountain he jerks his tail into the air like a royal sceptre, and waves it like the wand of a folks, as grubs are the proper bait for gudgeons. Petrarca. I have had as many dreams as most men. We are all made up of them, as the webs of the spider are particles of her own vitality. But how infinitely less do we profit by them! I will relate to you, before we separate, one among the multitude of mine, as coming the nearest to the poetry of yours, and as having been not totally useless to me. Often have I reflected on it; sometimes with pensiveness, with sadness never. Boccaccio. Then, Francesco, if you had with you as copious a choice of dreams as clustered on the elm-trees where the Sibyl led Æneas, this, in preference to the whole swarm of them, is the queen dream for me. Petrarca. When I was younger I was fond of wandering in solitary places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods and grottoes. Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my occupations, was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and the unfortunate, as most interested me by their courage, their wisdom, their eloquence, or their adventures. Engaging them in the conversation best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly their manners, their steps, their voices and often did I moisten with my tears the models I had been forming of the less happy. : Boccaccio. Great is the privilege of entering into the studies of the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly will, stiff, in its impurity and rust, against the finger of the Almighty Power that formed it: but give me, Francesco, give me rather the creature to sympathise with; apportion me the suf ferings to assuage. Ah, gentle soul! thou wilt | favour! Of these how large a portion come away never send them over to another; they have empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who better hopes from thee. Petrarca. We both alike feel the sorrows of those around us. He who suppresses or allays them in another, breaks many thorns off his own; and future years will never harden fresh ones. My occupation was not always in making the politician talk politics, the orator toss his torch among the populace, the philosopher run down from philosophy to cover the retreat or the advances of his sect; but sometimes in devising how such characters must act and discourse, on subjects far remote from the beaten track of their career. In like manner the philologist, and again the dialectician, were not indulged in the review and parade of their trained bands, but, at times, brought forward to show in what manner and in what degree external habits had influenced the conformation of the internal man. It was far from unprofitable to set passing events before past actors, and to record the decisions of those whose interests and passions are unconcerned in them. Boccaccio. This is surely no easy matter. The thoughts are in fact your own, however you distribute them. Petrarca. All can not be my own; if you mean by thoughts the opinions and principles I should be the most desirous to inculcate. Some favourite ones perhaps may obtrude too prominently, but otherwise no misbehaviour is permitted them: reprehension and rebuke are always ready, and the offence is punished on the spot. Boccaccio. Certainly you thus throw open, to its full extent, the range of poetry and invention; which can not but be very limited and sterile, unless where we find displayed much diversity of character as disseminated by nature, much peculiarity of sentiment as arising from position, marked with unerring skill through every shade and gradation; and finally and chiefly, much intertexture and intensity of passion. You thus convey to us more largely and expeditiously the stores of your understanding and imagination, than you ever could by sonnets or canzonets, or sinewless and sapless allegories. But weightier works are less captivating. If and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot VOL. II. visit the seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the passing wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short examination at home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the whole contexture coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is thrown away, then another; and before the week's end the store is gone, of things so shining and wonderful. Petrarca. Allegory, which you named with sonnets and canzonets, had few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight in general of idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose mansions there is neither hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the Passions. A stranger to the Affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill, covered with grey grass, by the way-side, I laid my head upon it, and slept. I can not tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision came over me. Two beautiful youths appeared beside me ; each was winged; but the wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other, "He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with that feather." Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point; although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm's length of it: the rest of the shaft, and the whole of the barb, was behind his ankles. "This feather never awakens anyone," replied he, rather petulantly; "but it brings more of confident security, and more of cherished dreams, than you without me are capable of imparting." "Be it so!" answered the gentler . . "none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously, call upon me for succour. But so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms, as upon you!" "Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!" said Love, contemptuously. "Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you: the dullest have observed it." I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated. Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to decide, and to choose A A my patron. Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose. and knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he would keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I can not tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, "Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives." "Say rather, child!" replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier, Say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it." Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his arrowhead; but replied not. Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did; but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees, I became ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my face away, I held out my arms, and felt my neck within his. Composure strewed and allayed all the throbbings of my bosom; the coolness of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to open above me; while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those others; but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily, Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes him fly farther off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one." "And Love!" said I, "whither is he departed! If not too late, I would propitiate and appease him." "He who can not follow me, he who can not overtake and pass me," said the Genius, "is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive thee." I looked the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue sky, and something brighter above it. PIEVANO GRIGI TO THE READER. BEFORE I proceeded on my mission, I had a | a story in two manners. The most approved is, final audience of Monsignore, in which I asked to knock on the head every soul that has been his counsel, whether a paper sewed and pasted interesting you: the second is, to put the two to the Interviews, being the substance of an intended Confession, might, according to the Decretals, be made public. Monsignore took the subject into his consideration, and assented. Previously to the solution of this question, he was graciously pleased to discourse on Boccaccio, and to say, "I am happy to think he died a good catholic, and contentedly." "No doubt, Monsignore!" answered I, "for when he was on his death-bed, or a little sooner, the most holy man in Italy admonished him terribly of his past transgressions, and frightened him fairly into Paradise." "Pievano !" said Monsignore, "it is customary in the fashionable literature of our times to finish youngest into bed together, promising the same treatment to another couple, or more. Our forefathers were equally zealous about those they dealt with. Every pagan turned christian: every loose woman had bark to grow about her, as thick and astringent as the ladies had in Ovid's Metamorphoses; and the gallants, who had played false with them, were driven mad by the monks at their death-bed. I neither hope nor believe that poor Boccaccio gave way to their importunities, but am happy in thinking that his decease was as tranquil as his life was inoffensive. He was not exempt from the indiscretions of youth: he allowed his imagination too long a dalliance with his passions; but malice was never found among them. Let us then, in charity to him and to ourselves, be persuaded that such a pest as this mad zealot had no influence over him, Nè turbò il tuono di nebbiosa mente Acqua si limpida e ridente.* I can not but break into verse, although no poet, while I am thinking of him. Such men as he, would bring over more to our good-natured honest old faith again, than fifty monks with scourges at their shoulders." "Ah Monsignore!" answered I, "could I but hope to be humbly instrumental in leading back the apostate church to our true catholic, I should be the happiest man alive." "God forbid you should be without the hope!" said Monsignore. "The two chief differences now are; with ours, that we must not eat butcher's meat on a Friday; with the Anglican, that they must not eat baked meat on a Sunday. Secondly, that we say, Come, and be saved: the Anglican says, Go, and be damned." Since the exposition of Monsignore, the Parliament has issued an Act of Grace in regard to eating. One article says, "Nobody shall eat on a Sunday, roast or baked or other hot victuals whatsoever, unless he goes to church in his own carriage; if he goes thither in any other than his own, be he halt or blind, he shall be subject to the penalty of twenty pounds. Nobody shall dance on a Sunday, or play music, unless he also be able to furnish three écarté tables, at the least, and sixteen waxlights." I write from memory; but if the wording is inexact, the sense is accurate. Nothing can be more gratifying to a true catholic, than to see the amicable game played by his bishops with the Anglican. The catholic never makes a false move. His fish often slips into the red square, marked Sunday, but the shoulder of mutton can never get into its place, marked Friday: it lies upon the table and nobody dares touch it. Alas! I am forgetting that this is purely an English game, and utterly unknown among us, or indeed in any other country under heaven. To promote still farther the objects of religion, as understood in the Universities and the Parliament, it was proposed that public prayers should be offered up for rain on every Sabbath-day, the more effectually to encompass the provisions of the Bill. But this clause was cancelled in the Committee, on the examination of a groom, who deposed that a coach-horse of his master's, the bishop of London, was touched in the wind, and might be seriously a sufferer: "for the bishop," said he, "is no better walker than a goose." There is, moreover, great and general discontent in the lower orders of the clergy, that some should be obliged to serve a couple of churches, and perhaps a jail or hospital to boot, for a sti *Nor did the thunderings of a cloudy mind Trouble so limpid and serene a water. pend of a hundred pounds, and even less, while others are incumbents of pluralities, doing no duty at all, and receiving three or four thousands. It is reported that several of the more fortunate are so utterly shameless as to liken the Church to a Lottery-office, and to declare that, unless there were great prizes, no man in his senses would enter into the service of our Lord. I myself have read with my own eyes this declaration: but I hope the signature is a forgery. What is certain is, that the emoluments of the bishopric of London are greater than the united revenue of twelve cardinals; that they are amply sufficient for the board, lodging, and education of three hundred young men destined to the ministry; and that they might relieve from famine, rescue from sin, and save perhaps from eternal punishment, three thousand fellow-creatures yearly. On a narrow inspection of one manufacturing town in England, I deliver it as my firm opinion, that it contains more crime and wretchedness than all the four continents of our globe. If these enormous masses of wealth had been fairly subdivided and carefully expended; if a more numerous and a more efficient clergy had been appointed; how very much of sin and sorrow had been obviated and allayed! Ultimately the poor will be driven to desperation, there being no check upon them, no guardian over them: and the eyes of the sleeper, it is to be feared, will be opened by pincers. In the midst of such woes, originating in her iniquities and aggravated by her supineness, the Church of England, the least reformed church in Christendom, and the most opposite to the institutions of the State, boasts of being the purest member of the Reformation. Shocked at such audacity and impudence, the conscientious and pious, not only of her laity but also of her clergy, fall daily off from her, and, resigning all hope of parks and palaces, embrace the cross. Never since the Reformation (so called) have our prospects been so bright as at the present day. Our own prelates and those of the English church are equally at work to the same effect; and the catholic clergy will come into possession of their churches, with as little change in the temporals as in the spirituals. It is the law of the land that the church can not lose her rights and possessions by lapse of time; impossible then that she should lose it by fraud and fallacy. Although the bishops of England, regardless of their vocations and vows, have, by deceit and falsehood, obtained acts of parliament, under sanction of which they have severed from their sees, and made over to their families, the possessions of the episcopacy, it can not be questioned that what has been wrongfully alienated will be rightfully restored. No time, no trickery, no subterfuge, can conceal it. The exposure of such thievery in such eminent stations, worse and more shameful than any on the Thames or in the lowest haunts of villany and prostitution, and of attempts to seize from their poorer brethren a few decimals to fill up a deficiency in many thousands, has opened wide the eyes of England. | am overjoyed in declaring to my townsmen, that Consequently, there are religious men who resort the recent demeanour of these prelates, refractory from all quarters to the persecuted mother they and mutinous as it has been (in other matters) to had so long abandoned. God at last has made the government of their patron the king, has ultihis enemies perform his work: and the English mately (by joining the malcontents in abolishprelates, not indeed on the stool of repentance, ing the favourite farce of religious freedom, and in as would befit them, but thrust by the scorner forbidding roast meat and country air on the into his uneasy chair, are mending with scarlet sabbath) filled up my subscription for the bell of silk, and seaming with threads of gold, the copes San Vivaldo. and dalmatics of their worthy predecessors. I London, June 17th, 1837. Salve Regina Coeli ! PRETE DOMENICO GRIGI. HEADS OF CONFESSION; A MONTHFUL. Printed and published Superiorum Licentid. March 14. Being ill at ease, I cried, "Diavolo! | one way, will take it another; never at a fault. I wish that creaking shutter was at thy bedroom, Manifold proof; poor sinner! instead of mine, old fellow!" Assuntina would have composed me, showing me how wrong it was. Perverse; and would not acknowledge my sinfulness to her. I said she had nothing to do with it; which vexed her. March 23. Reproved Assuntina, and called her ragazzaccia! for asking of Messer Piero Pimperna half the evening's milk of his goat. Very wrong in me; it being impossible she should have known that Messer Piero owed me four lire since ..I forget when. March 31. It blowing tramontana, I was ruffled suspected a feather in the minestra: said the rice was as black as a coal. Sad falsehood! made Assuntina cry.. Saracenic doings. Recapitulation. Shameful all this month: I did not believe such bad humour was in me. April 2. Thought ancharitably of Fra Biagio. The Frate took my hand, asking me to confess, reminding me that I had not confessed since the 3rd of March, although I was so sick and tribulated I could hardly stir. Peevish; said, "Confess yourself: I won't: I am not minded: you will find those not far off who.." and then I dipped my head under the coverlet, and saw my error. April 6. Whispers of Satanasso; pretty clear! A sprinkling of vernal thoughts, much too advanced for the season. About three hours before sunset, Francesco came. Forgot my prayers; ¦ woke at midnight; recollected, and did not say them. Might have told him: never occurred that, being a Canonico, he could absolve me: now gone again these three days, this being the fourteenth. Must unload ere heavier-laden. Gra Reflection. The devil, if he can not have his walk | tiæ plena! have mercy upon me! THE TRANSLATOR'S REMARKS ON THE ALLEGED JEALOUSY OF BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA. AMONG the most heinous crimes that can be be brought to light by cordage and windlass. committed against society, is the temerati crimen amici, Meanwhile their wrathfulness shows itself at once by a plashy and puffy superficies, with an exuberance of coarse rough stuff upon it, and is ready to soak our shoes with its puddle at the first pressure. and no other so loosens the bonds by which it is held together. Once and only once in my life, I heard it defended by a person of intellect and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy integrity. It was the argument of a friendly man, neighbour" is a commandment which the literary who would have invalidated the fact: it was the cast down from over their communion-table, to solicitude of a prompt and dexterous man, holding nail against the doors of the commonalty, with a up his hat to cover the shame of genius. I have fist and forefinger pointing at it. Although the indeed had evidence of some who saw nothing depreciation of any work is dishonest, the attempt extraordinary or amiss in these filchings and is more infamous when committed against a twitchings; but there are persons whose ther- friend. The calumniator on such occasions may mometer stands higher by many degrees at other points than at honour. There are insects on the shoals and sands of literature, shrimps which must be half-boiled before they redden; and there are blushes (no doubt) in certain men, of which the precious vein lies so deep that it could hardly in some measure err from ignorance, or from inadequate information, but nothing can excuse him if he speaks contemptuously. It is impossible to believe that such writers as Boccaccio and Petrarca could be widely erroneous in each other's merits: no less incredible is it that, if they did |