AN ESSAY ON THE LOVE OF PETRARCH. FU FORSE UN TEMPO DOLCE COSA AMORE, P. II. SON. LXXIII. I. ALTHOUGH Petrarch has contrived to throw a beautiful veil over the figure of Love, which the Grecian and Roman Poets delighted in representing naked—it is so transparent that we can still recognize the same forms. The ideal distinction between two Loves sprang at first from the different ceremonies with which the ancients worshipped the CELESTIAL VE NUS, who presided over the chaste loves of girls and wives; and the TERRESTRIAL VENUS, the avowed tutelar deity of the gallantries of ladies, who played a distinguished part in those times. In spite of the mystical and po B Letairae litical allegories which ancient metaphysics and modern erudition have built on these two names, the popular distinction is constantly supported by the poets when they describe the manners of their age, and the worship of the two goddesses*. Whilst virtuous women lived in such close retirement, that they never appeared at banquets, and occupied apartments separate from those of the men,-artists, poets, philosophers, magistrates, priests, and all the fashionable world, held their circles in the houses of ladies who made an avowed traffic of their charms, and lent their persons to be the models of the statues with which the Grecian temples were adorned. Every body knows that Aspasia, who governed Pericles and educated Alcibiades, was a priestess of the Terrestrial Venus. These ladies have had influence enough to place themselves under the protection of the Celestial Venus also, by propagating the belief that they had only one lover, and that the sentiments with which they inspired all others were virtuous; and it was the political interest of their admirers themselves to spread this opinion amongst the people. Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates * THEOCRITI Epigr. CALLIMACHUS et CATULLUS de Coma Berenices, sub fine. PROCLUS, in Ven. Hymn. 1. v. 7. 19. every refinement of reasoning, to prove that it is possible to be devoted to a gallant woman without desiring her favours*. II. We may, however, probably consider all that Plato makes his master say as apocryphal, except when the same things are repeated by Xenophon. These two great writers, whose rivality amounts almost to enmity, have each of them composed a treatise, under the title of THE BANQUET, in which they make Socrates discourse on Love. It is certain, therefore, that the new application to the ancient distinction between the two goddesses was originally of Socrates. But, in the Banquet of Xenophon, the object is not to deceive the Athenians, regarding the nature of those conversations which their great men held with the Aspasias of their time. Socrates' discourse aims at calling back to a sense of shame those of his fellow-citizens who were too passionate admirers of beauty in both sexes. Beauty," he says, "is illuminated by a light which directs and invites me to contemplate the soul which inhabits such a form; and, if the soul be as beautiful as the body, it is impossible not to love it. But there can be no beauty of soul without purity; and the purity of those, * PLATO, ZUμTоour passim. 66 whom I love the most tenderly, makes me also a good man. Thus, in proportion as the object of your attachment becomes dear to you, as you discover new qualities in it, and as you find a pleasure in making others admire it, it is your interest to preserve it pure from stain. By corrupting the morals, you deform and debase the soul, the perfection of which you would exalt; and this deformity extends to the countenance also. I will not assert that there are two Venuses; but, since I see that there are temples consecrated to the Celestial, and others to the Terrestrial Venus, and that they sacrifice in the first with ceremonies more scrupulous and with victims more pure, I presume that the two goddesses do exist at least in their effects. The vulgar Venus inflames the passions towards the body; the heavenly Venus inspires a love towards the soul, and incites to honest connexions and to virtuous actions*." III. THE imagination of Plato has apparently seized upon these exhortations to exalt and support an ingenious theory of Love, of * Εἰκάσαις δ ̓ ἂν καὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας τὴν μεν Πάνδημον τῶν σωμάτων ἐπιπέμπειν· τὴν δ ̓ Οὐρανίαν τῆς ψυχῆς τε καὶ τῆς φιλίας καὶ τῶν καλῶν ἔργων.—XENOPHON, Συμποσιον, sub fine. which it will be sufficient to notice here that portion which constitutes the machinery of Petrarch's poetry :-" Our souls emanate from God, and unto him they return again. They are pre-existent to our bodies in other worlds. The most tender and the most beautiful in habit Venus, the brightest and the purest of the planets, called the third heaven. They are more or less perfect, and the most perfect love those which are most perfect also. They are connected together in pairs by a predestined and immutable sympathy: without-partaking of the sensual perturbations of the body, they are necessitated to follow it blindly, led by fatality or chance, for the procreation of the species. Each soul burns with the desire to find its companion; and, when they do meet together in their pilgrimage on earth, their love becomes so much the more ardent, because the matter by which they are enclosed prevents their re-union. On these occasions their pleasures, their sufferings, their ecstasies, are inexpressible: each endeavours to make itself known to the other; a celestial light burns in the eyes; an immortal beauty beams in the countenance; the heart feels less tendency to earth, and they mutually incite each other to the exaltation and purification of |