OR
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
DIALOGUE THE FIRST
DIALOGUE THE SECOND
DIALOGUE THE THIRD
Most modern writers on Petrarch agree in stating that of all his works
the Dialogues which he calls _Secretum meum_ are the one which throws
most light upon the man himself.
Yet no English translation has hitherto been published. A French
version by M. Victor Develay was issued a few years ago, and received
the recognition of the French Academy; and, considering the great
importance of Petrarch in the history of the Renaissance, not merely in
Italy but in Europe, it is time that a similar opportunity of knowing
him more fully was offered to English readers; for there are signs on
both sides of the Atlantic that the number of those interested in him
is steadily growing. The reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that,
as the whole work of Petrarch comes to be better known, interest in him
as a man increases. Mr. Sidney Lee has lately reminded us of his wide
range and predominating influence in the matter of the sonnet in France
and in Elizabethan England, as well as in his own country; and yet that
influence was very far indeed from revealing all that Petrarch was.
It was largely an influence of style, a triumph of the perfection of
form, and his imitators did not trouble much about the precise nature
of the sentiment and spirit informing the style. When this came to
be weighed in the balances of a later day, the tendency of English
feeling was to regard his sentiment as a trifle too serious and weak.
The love-making of the Cavaliers brought in a robuster tone. When once
the question was raised, "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" there was
really no good answer to it on Petrarchan lines, and the consequence
was that his name and fame suffered something of eclipse among us. But
eclipses are transient events, and when literary England felt once more
the attraction of Italy in the end of the eighteenth century it was not
only Dante who began to resume his sway and to provoke translation, but
Petrarch also. Then attention was turned chiefly to his Italian poetry,
but also in some degree to the general body of his Latin works and to
his Letters, of which it is reported that Fox was among the first to
perceive the high value. In England the pioneers in this direction were
Mrs. Susannah Dobson, who published first a Life of Petrarch in two
volumes in 1775, which had by 1805 reached a sixth edition, and, soon
after, another volume called _Petrarch's View of Life_, purporting to
be a translation, but in fact a very loose and attenuated abstract
of the treatise _De remediis utriusque Fortunæ,_ which nevertheless
reached a new edition in 1797. Then came a volume of Essays on Petrarch
(Murray 1823) by the Italian exile Ugo Foscolo, and a little later a
second Life of the Poet by no less a person than Thomas Campbell, also
in two volumes.