Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed, Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said: I see a hope spring from that humble fear.
The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it could furnish him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or ornaments, or _playwiths_, but who sought to know it for the gratification of _knowing_; while he that first sought to _know_ in order to _be_ was the first philosopher. I have read of two rivers passing through the same lake, yet all the way preserving their streams visibly distinct--if I mistake not, the Rhone and the Adar, through the Lake of Geneva. In a far finer distinction, yet in a subtler union, such, for the contemplative mind, are the streams of knowing and being. The lake is formed by the two streams in man and nature as it exists in and for man; and up this lake the philosopher sails on the junction-line of the constituent streams, still pushing upward and sounding as he goes, towards the common fountain-head of both, the mysterious source whose being is knowledge, whose knowledge is being--the adorable I AM IN THAT I AM.
I have culled the following extracts from the First Epistle of the First Book of Petrarch's Epistle, that "Barbato Salmonensi." [Basil, 1554, i. 76.]
Vultûs, heu, blanda severi Majestas, placidæque decus pondusque senectæ!
Non omnia terræ Obruta! vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatum Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est.
Jamque observatio vitæ Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit. [Heu! et spem quoque tersit]
Pectore nunc gelido calidos miseremur amantes, Jamque arsisse pudet. Veteres tranquilla tumultus Mens horret, relegensque alium putat esse locutum.
But, indeed, the whole of this letter deserves to be read and translated. Had Petrarch lived a century later, and, retaining all his _substantiality_ of head and heart, added to it the elegancies and manly politure of Fracastorius, Flaminius, Vida and their corrivals, this letter would have been a classical gem. To a translator of genius, and who possessed the English language as unembarrassed property, the defects of style in the original would present no obstacle; nay, rather an honourable motive in the well-grounded hope of rendering the version a finer poem than the original.