PETRARCH 



4610 



PETREL 



PETRARCH 



land, gave the opposition a rallying point, and 

 thus hastened the triumph of constitutional 

 rule, which was absolutely established in 1689, 

 when William III signed the Bill of Rights 

 (which see). 



PETRARCH, pe'trahrk, FRANCESCO (1304- 

 1374), an Italian poet and classical scholar, 

 born at Arezzo. His father was a political ex- 

 ile from Florence, and consequently the boy 

 spent much of his childhood wandering from 

 city to city. !! 

 was sent to Mont- 

 pelier, Italy, in 

 1319, to study law, 

 and four 

 later to Bologna 

 for advanced 

 study in the same 

 subject, but his 

 secret intention 

 was to devote his 

 life to literary 

 work. His father 

 opposed this love 

 of writing and on one occasion burned all the 

 son's books on poetry and the manuscripts 

 which the young man had written. The father 

 died in 1326, and Petrarch henceforth gave most 

 of hie time to literary pursuits. 



While at Avignon, Italy, in 1327, he saw the 

 woman Laura, in whose honor he wrote nearly 

 every poem for which he is now remembered. 

 The rather unpoetic facts about her seem to 

 be that she was Laura de Noves, wife of an 

 Avignon citizen, that she was mother of eleven 

 children, and that she died of the plague in 

 1348. Nevertheless she inspired the writing of 

 some of the noblest lyrics in all literature and 

 achieved for herself an immortal name. The 

 poet seems never to have known her inti- 

 mately, and his verses deal more with the ideal 

 qualities of woman in general than with one in 

 particular. 



II > Latin poems and prose had made him so 

 famous by 1340 that both the University of 

 Paris and the University of Rome offered him 

 the laurel crown for poetry, and, choosing the 

 honor from the latter institution, he was pub- 

 licly crowned on Easter Sunday, 1341. He 

 afterwards wandered over Italy, serving vari- 

 ous important Church and State patrons, and in 

 his investigations discovered several letters and 

 two orations of Cicero. From time to time 

 IK- went back to Avignon to be near Laura, and 

 at one time bought a near-by estate at Vau- 

 cluse, with the same object. The news of her 



death caused him to write his Triumphs, among 

 the most beautiful love poems in any language. 

 After 1360 he spent his remaining years at 

 Argua, near Padua, Italy, busy with his beloved 

 books and manuscripts. 



He prided himself on his Latin poetry, es- 

 pecially an epic, Africa, dealing with the ad- 

 ventures of Africanus; but these works are 

 almost forgotten, while his Italian verses bid 

 fair to outlast time. From that day in 1470 

 when his Canzmtit r< , or collection of son.tr>, 

 was published at Venice, his influence over tin 

 poets of Europe has been too great to be esti- 

 mated adequately. He gave the sonnet a dig- 

 nified position in poetry, with new vigor, 

 warmth and nobility, while his refinement and 

 art gave to Italian verse an importance it had 

 never before enjoyed. 



Consult Jerrold's Francesco Petrarch, Poet and 

 HuiiKtnisl; Calthrop's Petrarch: His Life and 

 Times. 



PET'REL, the name applied to a group of 

 water birds, the smallest of those which make 

 their home far out on the sea. They ait swift 

 fliers, and are often seen in the wake of ships. 

 The name petrel, meaning little peter, refers 



Up and down ! Up and down ! 

 From the base of the wave to the billow's crown ; 

 And amidst the flashing and feathery I'M: mi 

 The Stormy Petrel finds a home 

 A home, if such a place may be, 

 Km- her who lives on the wide, will- 

 On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, 

 And only seeketh her rocky lair 

 To warm her young and to teach th<-m spring 

 At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing ! 

 CORNWALL : The Stormy Petrel. 



to their quick, graceful movements over, the 

 tops of the waves, suggesting the act of walk- 

 ing on the water. A distinguishing peculi- 

 arity of these birds is the tubular nostril. 

 Petrels are found in both the northern and 

 the southern hemispheres, but are most nu- 

 merous in southern waters. Among the better 

 known species are Wilson's petrel, Leach's 



