The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2): or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols.
By Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Classic work by Jameson, Mrs. (Anna).
Table of Contents
A POET'S LOVE. Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!--GUIDI. Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the dearest, the most enviable, is the power of ...
LOVES OF THE CLASSIC POETS. I am not sufficiently an antiquarian or scholar, to trace the muses "upward to their spring," neither is there occasion to seek our first examples of p...
THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS. Gente, che d'amor givan ragionando.--PETRARCA. The irruptions of the northern nations, among whom our sex was far better appreciated than among ...
THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS CONTINUED. In striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the ferocious Bertrand de Born: he, too, was one of the most celebrated Trouba...
GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA, CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA. Amatory poetry was transmitted from the Provencals to the Italians and Sicilians, among whom the language of the Tro...
LAURA. There are some who doubt the reality of Petrarch's love, because it is expressed in numbers; and others, refining on this doubt, profess even to question whether his Laura ...
LAURA AND PETRARCH CONTINUED. Much power of lively ridicule, much coarse wit,--principally French wit,--has been expended on the subject of Laura's virtue; by those, I presume, wh...
ON THE LOVE OF DANTE FOR BEATRICE PORTINARI. Had I taken chronology into due consideration, Dante ought to have preceded Petrarch, having been born some forty years before him,--b...
DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED. Through the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader--she does not appear in person; ...
CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD. After Italy, England,--who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length outstript her in the race of intellect,--was the next to produce a great and ...
LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND LUCRETIA DONATI. To Lorenzo de' Medici,--or rather to the preeminence his personal qualities, his family possessions, and his unequalled talents, gave him o...
THE FAIR GERALDINE. In the reign of the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, of Lorenzo's family, (Cosmo I.) Florence, it is said, beheld a novel and extraordinary spectacle: a young tra...
GINEVRA, AND ALESSANDRA STROZZI. While the sagacity of Horace Walpole was tracking the identity of the fair Geraldine, through the mazes of poetry and probability,--through parchm...
SPENSER'S ROSALIND AND SPENSER'S ELIZABETH. Pass we from the Ariosto of Italy, to Spenser, our English Ariosto; the transition is natural:--they resemble each other certainly, but...
ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE. Shakspeare--I approach the subject with reverence, and even with fear,--is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who appears to hav...
SYDNEY'S STELLA. At the very name of Sir Philip Sydney,--the generous, gallant, all-accomplished Sydney,--the roused fancy wakes, as at the sound of a silver trumpet, to all the g...
COURT AND AGE OF ELIZABETH. DRAYTON, DANIEL, DRUMMOND, &c. The voluminous Drayton[109] has left a collection of sonnets under the fantastic title of his IDEAS. Ideas they may be,...
LEONORA D'ESTE. Leonora d'Este, a princess of the proudest house in Europe, might have wedded an emperor, and have been forgotten. The idea, true or false, that she it was who bro...
MILTON AND LEONORA BARONI. The Marquis Manso of Naples, who in his early youth had entertained Tasso in his palace, had cherished and honoured him when that great but unhappy man ...