SOURCE: Ugo Foscolo, "A Parallel between Dante and Petrarach," in Essays on Petrarch, John Murray, 1823, pp. 163-208.

In the following essay, Foscolo, a renowed Italian poet, compares the poetry and philosophy of Dante and Petrarch.

L'un Disposto a Patire E L'altro a Fare. Dante, Purg. C. Xxv.

The excess of erudition in the age of Leo the Tenth, carried the refinements of criticism so far as even to prefer elegance of taste to boldness of genius. The laws of the Italian language were thus deduced, and the models of poetry selected exclusively from the works of Petrarch; who being then proclaimed superior to Dante, the sentence remained, until our times, unreversed. Petrarch himself mingles Dante indiscriminately with others eclipsed by his own fame—

   Ma ben ti prego, che in la terza spera,
 Guitton saluti, e Messer Cino, e Dante,
 Franceschin nostro, e tutta quella shiera.

   Così or quinci...