6a 



century, at which time Boccacio contributed, if we take the word of 

 no incompetent judge, to illumine and enrich the Italian quite as much 

 as Petrarch himfeif. This excellent judge thus delivers himfelf; IV/jo- 

 evcr hath not read Boccacio, can have no conception of the extent or 

 energy of the tongue. (Vincende della literatura, del. C. Denina.) To 

 thefe may be added the brother hiftorians Villani, in the fame century, 

 whofe labors fealed the purity of the Italian profe. Petrarch, however, 

 had an unreafonable defpair of the Italian, and fuppofmg it would not 

 outlive his century, compofed much the greater part of his works in 

 Latin. The latter is nearly forgot, while his Sonnets have immortalized 

 the Italian. This was the Auguftan age of Italy, and it were the com- 

 pliment of a coxcomb to fay, with a certain finical writer, that Petrarch 

 was the Waller of his day. 



In the inveftigation of fubjefts like the prefent, it may fometimes be 

 neceffary to view a queftion with a philofophic eye, and inftead of merely 

 Hating a faft, to account for the caufes that produced it. Thus the 

 period when France refigned the Latin for her own tongue, being fo 

 much earlier than when Italy formed hers, requires a fliort reflexion. 

 France, it was obferved above, had made fome fuccefsful ftruggles in 

 miijtc, which before the ninth century had confiderably altered the fe- 

 rocity of her manners, and prepared her bards for thofe notes, that not 

 only diftinguiflied the fucceeding age, but produced confequences which the 

 fined phrenzy of the poet's £ye could not have forefeen. Full of war and 

 bloodflied as were thofe times, they yet invited Tafte and Learning, in whofe 

 train followed Arts and Science, that after the revival of letters, and under 

 the patronage of the great, illuming the darknefs that fliaded the human 

 mind, led to the happy Reformation that has fince been fo beneficial to 

 the world. Europe looks back with afloniflament, but finds in the 

 eighth and ninth centuries the dawn of her prefent greatnefs, when poetry, 

 mufic, and the arts that polifli mankind appeared u'ith unexpefted luflre, giv- 

 ing birth to efforts by which the ages that followed have been enriched and 

 adorned: and it might be proved, that the very fubjeft we are now upon is a 

 wheel in the great machineHhen put in motion. This machine it was referved 



for 



