Madonna Laura_, was published in 1811.]

[567] _Memoires pour la Vie de Francois Petrarque_, Amsterdam, 1764, 3
vols. 4to.

[568] Letter to the Duchess of Gordon, August 17, 1782. _Life of
Beattie_, by Sir W. Forbes, ii. 102-106.

[569] Mr. Gibbon called his _Memoirs_ "a labour of love" (see _Decline
and Fall_, chap. lxx. note 2), and followed him with confidence and
delight. The compiler of a very voluminous work must take much criticism
upon trust; Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not as readily as some other
authors.

[570] {480} The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace
Walpole. See his letter to Dr. Joseph Warton, March 16, 1765.

[571] "Par ce petit manege, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs
bien menagee, une femme tendre & sage amuse pendant vingt et un ans le
plus grand Poete de son siecle, sans faire la moindre breche a son
honneur." _Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque_, Preface aux Francais, i.
p. cxiii.

[572] In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as
having a body exhausted with repeated _ptubs_. The old editors read and
printed _perturbationibus_; but M. Capperonier, librarian to the French
king in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation
that "on lit et qu'on doit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sade joined the
names of Messrs. Boudot and Bejot with M. Capperonier, and, in the whole
discussion on this _ptubs_, showed himself a downright literary rogue.
(See _Riflessioni_, p. lxxiv. _sq._; _Le Rime del Petrarca_, Firenze,
1832, ii. _s.f._) Thomas Aquinas is called in to settle whether
Petrarch's mistress was a _chaste_ maid or a _continent_ wife.

[573] {481}

"Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti dei
Dell' immagine tua, se mille volte
N' avesti quel, ch' i' sol una vorrei!"

Sonetto 50, _Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto_.
_Le Rime_, etc., i. 118, edit. Florence, 1832.

[574] "A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione una nuova
caduta, ch' ei fece."--Tiraboschi, _Storia_, lib. iii., _della
Letteratura Italiana_, Rome, 1783, v. 460.

[575] {482} "Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des
impressions que la mort n'efface pas."--M. de Bimard, Baron de la
Bastie, in the _Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions de Belles
Lettres_ for 1740 (_Memoires de Litterature_ [1738-1740], 1751, xvii.
424). (See also _Riflessioni, etc._, p. xcvi.; _Le Rime_, et