greatest renown nevertheless, as well as the predominant feelings of his existence, arose from the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the far-famed Laura, whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on a Good Friday; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets, which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all after lovers; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 1348, on the same day and hour on which he first beheld her. Who she was, or why their connection was not closer, remains à mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of all her modesty she did not show an insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted imagination, from his own repeated accounts, from all that he wrote, uttered, and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give the whole civilized world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the abundant riches to be found in one single idea, and of the going out of a man's self to dwell in the soul and happiness of another, which has served to refine the passion for all modern times ; and perhaps will do so, as long as love renews the world.”

At Vaucluse, or Valchiusa, " a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue," Petrarch resided for several years, and composed in it the greater part of his poems.

The following is a translation by sir William Jones, of

· AN ODE, BY PETRARCH,
TO THE FOUNTAIN OF VALCHIUSA,

Ye clear and sparkling streams!

(Warm'd by the sunny beams) Through whose transparent crystal Laura play'd ;

. Ye boughs that deck the grove,

Where Spring her chaplets wove,
While Laura lay beneath the quivering shade;

Sweet herbs I and blushing flowers !

That crown yon vernal bowers, For ever fatal, yet for ever dear;

that heard my sighs When first she charm'd my eyes, Soft-breathing gales! my dying accents hear.

My bursting heart, and close my eyes in death;

Ah! grant this slight request, —

That here my urn may rest,
When to its mansion flies my vital breatn.

This pleasing hope will smooth

My anxious mind, and soothe The pangs of that inevitable hour;

My spirit will not grieve

Her mortal veil to leave In these calm shades, and this enchanting bower.

Haply, the guilty maid

Through yon accustom'd glade
To my sad tomb will take her lonely way ;

Where first her beauty's light

O'erpower'd my dazzled sight,
When love on this fair border bade me stray:

There, sorrowing, shall she see,

Beneath an aged tree,
Her true, but hapless lover's lowly bier ;

Too late her tender sighs

Shall melt the pitying skies,
And her soft veil shall hide the gushing tear.

0! well-remember'd day,

When on yon bank she lay,
Meek in her pride, and in her rigour mild ;

The
young

and blooming Powers,
Falling in fragrant showers,
Shone on her neck, and on her bosom smil'd :

Some on her mantle hung,

Some in her locks were strung, Like orient gems in rings of Aaming gold ;

Some, in a spicy cloud

Descending, call'd aloud, " Here Love and Youth the reins of empire hold.".

I view'd the heavenly maid ;

And, rapt in wonder, said “The groves of Eden gave this angel birth ;"

Her look, her voice, her smile,

That might all Heaven beguile, Wafted my soul above the realms of earth:

The star-bespangled skies

Were open'd to my eyes ; Sighing I said, “ Whence rose this glittering scene ?"

Since that auspicious hour,

This bank, and odorous bower, My morning couch, and evening haunt have been,

Well mayst thou blush, my song,

To leave the rural throng
And Ay thus artless to my Laura's ear;

But, were thy poet's fire

Ardent as his desire, Thou wert a song that Heaven might stoop to hear.

It is within probability to imagine, that the original of this “ ode" may have been impressed on the paper, by Petrarch's pen, from the inkstand of the frontispiece.'

And

FORMERLY, a "Table Book" was a memorandum book, on which any thing was graved or written without ink. It is mentioned by Shakspeare. Polonius, on disclosing Ophelia's affection for Hamlet to the king, inquires

"When I had seen this hot love on the wing, what might you, Or my dear majesty, your queen here, think, If I had play'd the desk, or table-book ?"

Dr. Henry More, a divine, and moralist, of the succeeding century, observes, that "Nature makes clean the table-book first, and then portrays upon it what she pleaseth." In this sense, it might have been used instead of a tabula rasa, or sheet of blank writing paper, adopted by Locke as an illustration of the human mind in its incipiency. It is figuratively introduced to nearly the same purpose by Swift: he tells us that

"Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We scrawl all o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools.'

Dryden says, "Put into your Table-Book whatsoever you judge worthy."*

I hope I shall not unworthily err, if, in the commencement of a work under this litle, I show what a Table Book was.

Table books, or tablets, of wood, existed before the time of Homer, and among the Jews before the Christian æra. The table books of the Romans were nearly like ours, which will be described presently; except that the leaves, which were two, three, or more in number, were of wood surfaced with wax. They wrote on them with a style, one end of which was pointed for that pur pose, and the other end rounded or flattened, or effacing or scraping out. Styles were nade of nearly all the metals, as well as of Done and ivory; they were differently formed, and resembled ornamented skewers; the common style was iron. More anciently, he leaves of the table book were without wax, and marks were made by the iron style on the bare wood. The Anglo-Saxon style was very handsome. Dr. Pegge was of opinion that the well-known jewel of Alfred, preserved in the Ashmolean nuseum at Oxford, was the head of the tyle sent by that king with Gregory's Pastoral to Athelney.†

preceding antiquaries, and remains unrivalled by his contemporaries, in his "Illustrations of Shakspeare," notices Hamlet's expression, "My tables, meet it is I set it down." On that passage he observes, that the Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a style was continued through the middle ages; and that specimens of wooden tables, filled with wax, and constructed in the fourteenth century, were preserved in several of the monastic libraries in France. Some of these consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. He says that in the middle ages there were table books of ivory, and sometimes, of late, in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps; and he transfers a figure of one of the latter from an old work to his own: it resembles the common "slate-books" still sold in the stationers' shops. He presumes that to such a table book the archbishop of York alludes in the second part of King Henry IV.,

"And therefore will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell-tale to his memory."

Às in the middle ages there were tablebooks with ivory leaves, this gentleman remarks that, in Chaucer's "Sompnour's Tale," one of the friars is provided with