Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1905-04-27
GREATEST OF LOVE POETS
Six Hundredth Anniversary of the
Birth of Petrarch the
Italian.

On the goth of July, 1904, was born the
man who holds in literature the place
of greatest poet Of love, writes Lindsay
Bashford, in the New York World.
Dante loved Beatrice as strong, severe
mind can love a woman seen but once on
a Florentine bridge at twilight; wom-
an who died ignorant of his worship and
whom the exiled poet idealized and saw
in the paradise Of his imagination in
the divine comedy. After Dante in the
succession of great Italian poets comes
Petrarch He loved Laura, and has
avowed his love In many sonnets &C
knowledged to be the greatest songs OF
love in any language, Yet Laura was
married when Petrarch first saw her to
an estimable husband Hugh de SADIE,
and was the mother of several children.
And Petrarch. ecclesiastic though he
was, loved another woman at the same
time and became the father Of son and
daughter.
Few men have been so versatile and
so universally admired. His life was an
accumuAting triumph and singularly
happy. Undisturbed by financial ques-
lions, handsome, impulsive, adventur-
Gus, he Travelled in his youth through
Italy and Provence. He was one of the
heralds of the Renaissance. He discov-
cred, translated and explained the great
Latin authors especially Cicero, to the
eager intellects of his day. He wrote in
Vulnerable Latin treatises on philOs=
ophy and learning. He was a friend
Of Cola di Rienzl, the famous democratic
tribune of Rome, of whom Bulwer Lyt-
ton has given so clever a picture in his
famous novel. He was a reformer, an
ardent lover of liberty, rebelling against
the rigid rules of the church and the
gross superstitions of the day. He be-
came a dictator of learning and men
came to visit him from every country
in Europe, on a pilgrimage to the in
tellectual sovereign Of the day. He
spent long hours in conversation with
Saint Augustine, whose Confessions"
he carried about with him always He
was a friend of Boccaceio, the mental
father of Ariosto. And all the time.
brilliant, honored, enthusiastic, he sang
his songs-his "Trionfi," his Canon
ieri"-over 300 of which we can read
to-day; his songs to Laura, as fresh and
warm and graceful as if the two charm
ing figures were living and singing in
our midst.
He had his faults. Vain, ambitious,
erratic, luxurious, he was typical of the
wonderful era in which he lived, the
Renaissance, when men seemed sudden
ly to awaken to the realization of how
beautiful O thing life could be. Laura
died in 1348, and he continued to sing Of
her, as gracefully as ever, until his own
death in 1874. Intended by his parents
for the law, he became instead scholar
and a poet. His poetry has lived with
that of the greatest worlds poets, and
to those for whom poetry is an indis-
pensable factor in a wise and catholic
education Petrarch must always be a
brilliant figure 'The italian Renais-
sance," concludes the great contem-
porary historian, Prof Villari, twas
revolution brought about in the'human
mind and In culture by the study Of
beauty" Petrarch was its herald, its
prophet, and in many ways its most ex-
quisite exponent.