first of the family in fame and merit was the elder Stephen, whom Petrarch loved and esteemed as a hero superior to his own times, and not unworthy of ancient Rome. Persecution and exile displayed to the nations his abilities in peace and war; in his distress, he was an object, not of pity, but of reverence; the aspect of danger provoked him to avow his name and country: and when he was asked, "Where is now your fortress ?" he laid his hand on his heart, and answered, "Here." He supported, with the same virtue, the return of prosperity: and till the ruin of his declining age, the ancestors, the character, and the children of Stephen Colonna, exalted his dignity in the Roman republic and at the court of Avignon. II. The Ursini migrated from Spoleto:* the sons of Ursus, as they are styled in the twelfth century, from some eminent person, who is only known as the father of their race. But they were soon distinguished among the nobles of Rome, by the number and bravery of their kinsmen, the strength of their towers, the honours of the senate and sacred college, and the elevation of two popes, Celestin the Third and Nicholas the Third, of their name and lineage.† Their riches may be accused as an early abuse of nepotism; the estates of St. Peter were alienated in their favour by the liberal Celestin; and Nicholas was Vallis te proxima misit, Spoletana metunt armenta gregesque protervi. Monaldeschi (tom. xii. Script. Ital. p. 533) gives the Ursini a French origin, which may be remotely true. In the metrical life of Celestin V. by the cardinal of St. George (Muratori, tom. iii. p. 1, p. 613, &c.), we find a luminous, and not inelegant, passage (1. 1, c. 3, p. 203, &c.): genuit quem nobilis Ursa (Ursi?) Progenies, Romana domus, veterataque maguis Muratori (dissert. 42, tom. iii.) observes, that the first Ursini ponti- ambitious for their sake to solicit the alliance of monarchs; to found new kingdoms in Lombardy and Tuscany; and to invest them with the perpetual office of senators of Rome, All that has been observed of the greatness of the Colonna, will likewise redound to the glory of the Ursini, their constant and equal antagonists in the long hereditary feud, which distracted above two hundred and fifty years the ecclesiastical state. The jealousy of pre-eminence and power was the true ground of their quarrel; but as a specious badge of distinction, the Colonna embraced the name of Ghibellines and the party of the empire; the Ursini espoused the title of Guelphs and the cause of the Church. The eagle and the keys were displayed in their adverse banners; and the two factions of Italy most furiously raged when the origin and nature of the dispute were long since forgotten.* After the retreat of the popes to Avignon, they disputed in arms the vacant republic; and the mischiefs of discord were perpetuated by the wretched compromise of electing each year two rival senators. By their private hostilities, the city and country were desolated, and the fluctuating balance inclined with their alternate success. But none of either family had fallen by the sword, till the most renowned champion of the Ursini was surprised and slain by the younger Stephen Colonna.† His triumph is stained with the reproach of violating the truce; their defeat was basely avenged by the assassination, before the church-door, of an innocent boy and his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna, with an annual colleague, was declared senator of Rome during the term of five years. And the muse of * In his fifty-first Dissertation on the Italian Antiquities, Muratori explains the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. [For the origin of the house of Guelph, see Notes, vol. v. p. 428, and vol. vi. p. 475. The contest for the crown of Germany and duchy of Bavaria in 1138, between this family and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, was the origin of long wars. The party of the latter, from his paternal castle of Wiblingen (in the present Neckar circle of Wirtemburg) took the name of Ghibelines, which they retained in their subsequent Italian struggles. The papal faction and the free cities of Northern Italy, from their alliance with the Guelphs, were designated after them. See also Muratori, Annali d'Italia, anno 1138, tom. xv. p. 308, Venezia, 1790. --ED.] Petrarch (tom. i. p. 222-230) has celebrated this victory according to the Colonna; but two contemporaries, a Florentine (Giovanni Villani, 1. 10, c. 220), and a Roman (Ludovico Monaldeschi, p. 533, 534), are less favourable to their arms. Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction, that the generous youth, the son of his venerable hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their pristine glory; that his justice would extirpate the wolves and lions, the serpents and bears, who laboured to subvert the eternal basis of the marble COLUMN.* CHAPTER LXX.-CHARACTER AND CORONATION OF PETRARCH.RESTORATION OF THE FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT OF ROME BY THE TRIBUNE RIENZI. HIS VIRTUES AND VICES, HIS EXPULSION AND DEATH.-RETURN OF THE POPES FROM AVIGNON.-GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST.-REUNION OF THE LATIN CHURCH.-LAST STRUGGLES OF ROMAN LIBERTY.-STATUTES OF ROME-FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATE. IN the apprehension of modern times, Petrarcht is the Italian songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of his Tuscan rhymes, Italy applauds, or rather adores, the father * The Abbé de Sade (tom. i. notes, p. 61-66) has applied the sixth canzone of Petrarch, Spirto Gentil, &c. to Stephen Colonna the younger : Orsi, lupi, leoni, aquile e serpi Ad una gran marmorea Colonna Fanno noja sovente e à se danno. The Mémoires sur la Vie de François Petrarque (Amsterdam, 1764, 1767, three vols. in 4to.) form a copious, original, and entertaining work, a labour of love, composed from the accurate study of Petrarch and his contemporaries; but the hero is too often lost in the general history of the age, and the author too often languishes in the affectation of politeness and gallantry. In the preface to his first volume, he enumerates and weighs twenty Italian biographers, who have professedly treated of the same subject. [Lord Byron in a note to Childe Harold (canto iv. stanza 30) says that this "labour of love" was followed by Gibbon with too much confidence and delight, for "thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever." This Scotchman was Lord Woodhouselee, now known to have been the author of two publications, which appeared anonymously in 1810, one entitled An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, and the other A Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbé de Sade. In these it is maintained that Laura "was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country; that she was never married, and was a haughty virgin." Yet neither these heresies, nor the bolder scepticism of Byron, could shake the faith of Ugo Foscolo, who, when he published at London in 1823 his Essays on Petrarch, still adhered to the Abbé de Sade's story, but without adducing any new arguments or of her lyric poetry; and his verse, or at least his name, is repeated by the enthusiasm, or affectation, of amorous sensibility. Whatever may be the private taste of a stranger, his slight and superficial knowledge should humbly acquiesce in the judgment of a learned nation; yet I may hope or presume, that the Italians do not compare the tedious uniformity of sonnets and elegies, with the sublime compositions of their epic muse, the original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso, and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am still less qualified to appreciate; nor am I deeply interested in a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her existence has been questioned;* for a matron so prolific,† that she was delivered of eleven legitimate children, while her amorous swain sighed and sang at the fountain of Vaucluse.§ authorities in its support; he merely adds (p. 11) that it was admitted as undeniable by Tiraboschi and his Italian opponents. The question, therefore, still remains as unsettled as it was left by Lord Byron, who says in conclusion: "It is, after all, not unlikely that our historian (Gibbon) was right in retaining his favourite hypothetical salvo, which secures the author, although it scarcely saves the honour of the still unknown mistress of Petrarch."-ED.] * The allegorical interpretation prevailed in the fifteenth century; but the wise commentators were not agreed whether they should understand by Laura, religion, or virtue, or the blessed Virgin, or See the prefaces to the first and second volumes. Laure de Noves, born about the year 1307, was married in January, 1325, to Hugues de Sade, a noble citizen of Avignon, whose jealousy was not the effect of love, since he married a second wife within seven months of her death, which happened the 6th of April, 1348, precisely one-and-twenty years after Petrarch had seen and loved her. Corpus crebris partubus exhaustum : from one of these is issued, in the tenth degree, the Abbé de Sade, the fond and grateful biographer of Petrarch; and this domestic motive most probably suggested the idea of his work, and urged him to inquire into every circumstance that could affect the history and character of his grandmother. (See particularly tom. i. p. 122-133, notes, p. 7-58; tom. ii. p. 455-495, notes, p. 76-82.) [The word which appears above as partubus, is abbreviated in MSS. as ptbs., which some have interpreted perturbationibus. This construction is briefly and somewhat contemptuously dismissed by Ugo Foscolo (Essays, p. 11), while Lord Byron, in his before-quoted note, accuses the Abbé de Sade of procuring fraudulent evidence, and styles him " a downright literary rogue." His illustrious descent remains at least doubtful. -ED.] § Vaucluse, so familiar to our English travellers, is described from the writings of Petrarch and the local knowledge of his biographer. (Mémoires, tom. i. p. 340–359.) It But in the eyes of Petrarch, and those of his graver contemporaries, his love was a sin, and Italian verse a frivolous amusement. His Latin works of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, established his serious reputation, which was soon diffused from Avignon over France and Italy; his friends and disciples were multiplied in every city; and if the ponderous volume of his writings* be now abandoned to a long repose, our gratitude must applaud the man, who, by precept and example, revived the spirit and study of the Augustan age. From his earliest youth, Petrarch aspired to the poetic crown. The academical honours of the three faculties had introduced a royal degree of master or doctor in the art of poetry;† and the title of poet-laureate, which custom, rather than vanity, perpetuates in the English court, was first invented by the Cæsars of Germany. In the musical games of antiquity, a prize was bestowed on the victor;§ the belief that Virgil and Horace had been crowned in the Capitol inflamed the emulation of a Latin bard ;¶ and was, in truth, the retreat of a hermit, and the moderns are much mistaken, if they place Laura and a happy lover in the grotto. * Of one thousand two hundred and fifty pages, in a close print, at Basil in the sixteenth century, but without the date of the year. The Abbé de Sade calls aloud for a new edition of Petrarch's Latin works; but I much doubt whether it would redound to the profit of the bookseller, or the amusement of the public. + Consult Selden's Titles of Honour, in his works (vol. iii. p. 457466). A hundred years before Petrarch, St. Francis received the visit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat coronatus, et exinde rex versuum dictus. From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false and venal; but I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who, in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolishing this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue, and the poet a man of genius. $ Isocrates (in Panegyrico, tom. i. p. 116, 117, edit. Battie, Cantab. 1729) claims for his native Athens the glory of first instituting and recommending the ἁγῶνας—καὶ τά ἆθλα μέγιστα-μὴ μόνον τάχους καὶ ῥώμης, ἀλλὰ καὶ λόγων καὶ γνώμης. The example of the Panathenæa was imitated at Delphi; but the Olympic games were ignorant of a musical crown, till it was extorted by the vain tyranny of Nero. (Sueton. in Nerone, c. 23; Philostrat. apud Casaubon ad locum; Dion Cassius, or Xiphilin, 1. 63, p. 1032. 1041; Potter's Greek Antiquities, vol. i. p. 445. 450.) The Capitoline games (certamen quinquennale, musicum, equestre, gymnicum) were insti |