ay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, 1810.) I
shall not offer any opinion as to the identity of Petrarch's mistress
with Laura de Sade; but the main position of Lord W.'s essay, that Laura
was an unmarried woman, and the object of an honourable attachment in
her lover, seems irreconcileable with the evidence that his writings
supply. 1. There is no passage in Petrarch, whether of poetry or prose,
that alludes to the virgin character of Laura, or gives her the usual
appellations of unmarried women, puella in Latin, or donzella in
Italian; even in the Trionfo della Castita, where so obvious an
opportunity occurred. Yet this was naturally to be expected from so
ethereal an imagination as that of Petrarch, always inclined to invest
her with the halo of celestial purity. We know how Milton took hold of
the mystical notions of virginity; notions more congenial to the
religion of Petrarch than his own:

Quod tibi perpetuus pudor, et sine labe juventas
Pura fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas,
En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores.
Epitaphium Damonis.

2. The coldness of Laura towards so passionate and deserving a lover, if
no insurmountable obstacle intervened during his twenty years of
devotion, would be at least a mark that his attachment was misplaced,
and show him in rather a ridiculous light. It is not surprising, that
persons believing Laura to be unmarried, as seems to have been the case
with the Italian commentators, should have thought his passion affected,
and little more than poetical. But upon the contrary supposition, a
thread runs through the whole of his poetry, and gives it consistency. A
love on the one side, instantaneously conceived, and retained by the
susceptibility of a tender heart and ardent fancy; nourished by slight
encouragement, and seldom presuming to hope for more; a mixture of
prudence and coquetry on the other, kept within bounds either by virtue
or by the want of mutual attachment, yet not dissatisfied with fame more
brilliant and flattery more refined than had ever before been the lot of
woman--these are surely pretty natural circumstances, and such as do not
render the story less intelligible. Unquestionably such a passion is not
innocent. But Lord Woodhouselee, who is so much scandalized at it, knew
little, one would think, of the fourteenth century. His standard is
taken not from Avignon, but from Edinburgh, a much better place, no
d