CHAP visit of Chaucer, appears to be the last letter XXXV. 1373. of his Ital ian biographers. the aged poet ever wrote, Petrarca found, or imagined, that his letters were intercepted and opened on the road by men of taste, for the purpose of transcribing the ingenious sallies, or the flashes of eloquence, with which they should happen to be interspersed. At length, he says, the marauders grew weary of this modest and orderly species of theft, and retained his paquets, that they might save themselves the trouble of transcribing them. Disgusted at this violation of the laws of civilised life, hostile to all the confidence of intercourse and society, he formed the determination to write no more. This resolution he announces in the letter in question, in which he takes his leave in form of his friends and of correspondence: "Valete, amici; valete, epistolæ,"is .5 As to the biographers of Petrarca, the reader who has examined the account which De Sade gives of his predecessors, will not be surprised at any anachronism, omission or absurdity, of which they may have been guilty. XXXV. 1373. Language of De the sub -The case of De Sade himself as to the point CHAP. in question, is still more singular. In the preface to the second of his three extensive quartos, he has announced his intention of proving to his readers that Chaucer was inject. connection (en liaison) with Petrarca; but this engagement he has not performed in the sequel of his work. Mr. Tyrwhit in consequence" suspects that his more accurate researches have not enabled the author to verify an opinion, which he probably at first adopted upon the credit of some biographer of Chaucer." But this is not the only, nor the most natural, solution. De Sade has not advanced his statement precipitately; not in the preface to his first, but to his second volume. The promise being made when this volume was published, could only refer to the sequel of the work. But the author at length became alarmed at the labour, or the gigantic appearance, of his production. In the third volume, published three years later • Introd. Discourse, n. 20, XXXV. 1373. CHAP. than the second, he has entirely changed his plan. He had divided his history into six books, of which the first two volumes contain three, while the other three are compressed into the remaining volume. In this concluding volume he has entirely suppressed his Appendix of Notes and Illustrations. He professes also to have omitted all details which were not absolutely essential to his subject. It is easy to conceive then that the particulars which related to Chaucer may have been among those he omitted. Conclusion. What were the documents, if any, which De Sade refers to on this subject, I have not been able to discover. Perhaps they yet exist in manuscript in the curious collections of this nature in Italy or France. But, be this as it will, a man must have Mr. Tyrwhit's appetite for the fascinating charms of a barren page and a meagre collection of dates, not to perceive that the various coincidences enumerated; - -Chaucer representing the speaker as having learned his tale from Petrarca at Padua, though it was previously the property of Boccaccio; Padua XXXV. 1373. being then Petrarca's actual residence; the CHAP. embassy of Chaucer to Genoa in 1373; and Petrarca having in that very year translated the tale into Latin prose ;-not to perceive, say, that these coincidences furnish a basis of historical probability, seldom to be met with in points of this nature. I CHAP. XXXVI. WICLIFFE APPOINTED TO NEGOCIATE WITH THE CHAP. THE question of the papal provisions and 1373. reservations, notwithstanding the several acts of parliament which had been passed on the subject, was as yet far from being settled. The affair was of a peculiar nature: the clergy of the different states of Christendom at this time acknowledged two independent heads on earth; and it was therefore by no means considered as the token of a discontented and turbulent disposition, if on any particular occasion they avowed the necessity |
