PETRARCH'S INKSTAND. and sent many precious volumes to England to enrich the bishop's magnificent library. He vividly remarks, "I delight passionately in my books;" and yet he who had accumulated them largely, estimated them rightly: he has a saying of books worthy of himself" a wise man seeketh not quantity but sufficiency." Petrarch loved the quiet scenes of nature; and these can scarcely be observed from a carriage or while riding, and are never enjoyed but on foot; and to me-on whom that discovery was imposed, and who am sometimes restrained from country walks, by necessity-it was no small pleasure, when I read a passage in his "View of Human Nature,' which persuaded me of his fondness for the exercise: “A journey on foot hath most pleasant commodities; a man may go at his pleasure; none shall stay him, none shall carry him beyond his wish; none shall trouble him; he hath but one labour, the labour of nature-to go." MISS EDGEWORTH'S lines express her estimation of the gem she has the happiness to own. That lady allowed a few casts from it in bronze, and a gentleman who possesses one, and who favours the " Table Book" with his approbation, permits its use for a frontispiece to this volume. The engraving will not be questioned as a decoration, and it has some claim to be regarded as an elegant illustration of a miscellany which draws largely on art and literature, and on nature itself, towards its supply. "I delight," says Petrarch, “in my pic tures. I take great pleasure also in images; they come in show more near unto nature than pictures, for they do but appear; but these are felt to be substantial, and their bodies are more durable. Amongst the Grecians the art of painting was esteemed above all handycrafts, and the chief of all the liberal arts. How great the dignity hath been of statues; and how fervently the study and desire of men have reposed in such pleasures, emperors and kings, and other poble personages, nay, even persons of inferior degree, have shown, in their industhous keeping of them when obtained." Lasting on the golden mean, as a rule of harpness, he says, "I possess an amazing coction of books, for attaining this, and every virtue: great is my delight in beholdg such a treasure." He slights persons who collect books "for the pleasure of bousting they have them; who furnish their chambers with what was invented to furnish their minds; and use them no otherwise than they do their Corinthian tables, or ther painted tables and images, to look a." He contemns others who esteem not the true value of books, but the price at they may sell them" a new pracLace (observe it is Petrarch that speaks) *tre in among the rich, whereby they may ne art more of unruly desire." He repeats, with rivetting force, "I have great Beaty of books: where such scarcity has beenamented, this is no small possession: 1 are an inestimable many of books!" He was a digent collector, and a liberal er of these treasures. He correspored with Richard de Bury, an illusprate of our own country, eminent Shore of learning and learned men, In "The Indicator" there is a paper of peculiar beauty, by Mr. Leigh Hunt, "on receiving a sprig of myrtle from Vaucluse," with a paragraph suitable to this occasion: "We are supposing that all our readers are acquainted with Petrarch. Many of them doubtless know him intimately. Should any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak of him in the gross? We should say, that he was one of the finest gentlemen and greatest scholars that ever lived; that he was a writer who flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century, at the time when Chaucer was young, during the reigns of our Edwards; that he was the greatest light of his age; that although so fine a writer himself, and the author of a multitude of works, or rather because he was both, he took the greatest pains to revive the knowledge of the ancient learning, recommending it every where, and copying out large manuscripts with his own hand; that two great cities, Paris and Rome, contended which should have the honour of crowning him; that he was crowned publicly, in the metropolis of the world, with laurel and with myrtle; that he was the friend of Boccaccio the father of Italian prose; and lastly, that his greatest renown nevertheless, as well as the predominant feelings of his existence, arose from the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the far-famed Laura, whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on a Good Friday; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets, which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all after lovers; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 1348, on the same day and hour on which he first beheld her. Who she was, or why their connection was not closer, remains a mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of all her modesty she did not show an insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted imagination, from his own repeated accounts, from all that he wrote, uttered, and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give the whole civilized world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the abundant riches to be found in one single idea, and of the going out of a man's self to dwell in the soul and happiness of another, which has served to refine the passion for all modern times; and perhaps will do so, as long as love renews the world." At Vaucluse, or Valchiusa, "a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows surrounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river Sorgue," Petrarch resided for several years, and composed in it the greater part of his poems. The following is a translation by sir William Jones, of AN ODE, BY PETRARCH, TO THE FOUNTAIN OF VALCHIUSA Ye clear and sparkling streams! Through whose transparent crystal Laura play'd; While Laura lay beneath the quivering shade; For ever fatal, yet for ever dear; My bursting heart, and close my eyes in death That here my ura may rest, My anxious mind, and soothe Her mortal veil to leave In these calm shades, and this enchanting hower Haply, the guilty maid Through yon accustom'd glade To my sad tomb will take her lonely way Her true, but hapless lover's lowly bier; Shall melt the pitying skies, And her soft veil shall hide the gushing tear When on yon bank she lay, Some in her locks were strung, Some, in a spicy cloud "Here Love and Youth the reins of empire hold. "The groves of Eden gave this angel birth;" Wafted Were open'd to my eyes; Sighing I said, "Whence rose this glittering scene?' Since that auspicious hour, This bank, and odorous bower, My morning couch, and evening haunt have been. Well mayst thou blush, my sung, To leave the rural throng And fly thus artless to my Laura's ear; But, were thy poet's fire Ardent as his desire, Thou wert a song that Heaven might stoop to hear It is within probability to imagine, that the original of this "ode" may have been impressed on the paper, by Petrarch's pea, from the inkstand of the frontispiece. TABLE BOOK. FORMERLY, a "Table Book" was a memoranium book, on which any thing was graved or written without ink. It is mentoned by Shakspeare. Polonius, on disclosing Ophelia's affection for Hamlet to the Ling, inquires "When I had seen this hot love on the wing, what might you, ory dear majesty, your queen here, think, If had play 1 the desk, or table-book ?" Dr Henry More, a divine, and moralist, of the succeeding century, observes, that Nature makes clean the table-book first, and then portrays upon it what she please." In th sense, it might have been used instead of a tabula rasa, or sheet of bank writing paper, adopted by Locke as anustration of the human mind in its pency. It is figuratively introduced to early the same purpose by Swift: he es us that • Nature's fair table-book, our tender souls, We strawi ali o'er with old and empty rules, Stale memorandums of the schools.' Dryden says, "Put into your Table-Book whatsoever you judge worthy." I hope I shall not unworthily err, if, in the commencement of a work under this te, I show what a Table Book was. Table books, or tablets, of wood, existed before the time of Homer, and among the Jews before the Christian era. The table bucks of the Romans were nearly like ours, which will be described presently; except that the leaves, which were two, three, or in number, were of wood surfaced With wax. They wrote on them with a style, one end of which was pointed for that purper and the other end rounded or flattened, trang or scraping out. Styles were Made of Learly all the metals, as well as of be and isory; they were differently formed, an resembled ornamented skewers; the style was iron. More anciently, ares of the table book were without WAL, and marks were made by the iron the bare wood. The Anglo-Saxon Bye was very handsome. Dr. Pegge was on that the well-known jewel of A preserved 10 the Ashmolean mat Oxford, was the head of the set by that king with Gregory's Part, to Athelony t Ateman, whose profound knowledge of aric antiquities surpasses that of preceding antiquaries, and remains unrivalled by his contemporaries, in his "Illustrations of Shakspeare," notices Hamlet's expression, "My tables,-meet it is I set it down." On that passage he observes, that the Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a style was continued through the middle ages; and that specimens of wooden tables, filled with wax, and constructed in the fourteenth century, were preserved in several of the monastic libraries in France. Some of these consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. He says that in the middle ages there were table books of ivory, and sometimes, of late, in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps; and he transfers a figure of one of the latter from an old work to his own: it resembles the common "slate-books" still sold in the stationers' shops. He presumes that to such a table book the archbishop of York alludes in the second part of King Henry IV., * "And therefore will he wipe his tables clean As in the middle ages there were tablebooks with ivory leaves, this gentleman remarks that, in Chaucer's "Sompnour's Tale," one of the friars is provided with "A pair of tables all of ivory, And wrote alway the names, as he stood, A correspondent, understood to be Mr. Douce, in Dr. Aikin's "Athenæum," subsequently says, "I happen to possess a table-book of Shakspeare's time. It is a little book, nearly square, being three inches wide and something less than four in length, bound stoutly in calf, and fastening with four strings of broad, strong, brown tape. The title as follows: Writing Tables, with a Kalender for xxiiii yeeres, with sundrie necessarie rules. The Tables made by Robert Triple. London, Imprinted for the Company of Stationers.' The tables are inserted immediately after the almanack. At first sight they appear like what we call asses-skin, the colour being precisely 12mo Gesner De rerum fossilium figuris, &c. Tigur. 1565; |