Author: PETRARCA (Francesco):
Title: Sonnets, and Odes Translated from the Italian of Petrarch; with original Text, and an Account of his Life.
Description: London: Printed for T. Davies..., 1787. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this translation. 8vo, 187 x 113 mms., pp. [iv], v - xxiii [xxiv blank], 105 [106 blank, 107 drop-title, 108 - 111 contents, 112 blank], cypher ownership initials with animal figure on recto of blank leaf before half-title, contemporary calf, spine ornately gilt to a floral motif, black leather label, gilt border on covers; closed tear in front free end-paper, earlier ownership bookplate on front paste-down end-paper damaged, spine slightly dried, joints slightly rubbed, but a very good copy. Francesco Petrarca (1304 – 1374) is often called the "Father of Humanism," but readers are more likely to remember that he gave up his vocation as a priest when he was attracted by the sight "Laura" in 1327 in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon. He composed some 366 poems, Il Canzoniere, thirty of which are here translated into English, along with three odes. In Petrarch's Canzoniere 164: An Anthology of English Translations with a New Version (1996), J. G. Nichols includes one of the translations in this volume, and suggests that the translator might be the physician and classical scholar John Nott (1751 - 1825), and the BL listing names Nott as the translator. Alas for any high hopes that the author might have had for his translation: the anonymous reviewer in the Monthly Review (1778) was not sympathetic: "To translate Petrarch is a task for the first poetical abilities, supported by the truest and most delicate judgement; but it is a task of the forbidding kind. Interwoven with the finest poetical imagery and sentiment, there are so many trifling conceits, that the labour of selection and exclusion would be at once tedious and difficult. The little that this author has done towards translating him, is done badly, and what he calls Some Account of the Author's life, would disgrace the pen of an apothecary's apprentice" (page 161). Perhaps the last two words are an oblique confirmation of Nott's identity.

Keywords: poetry translation literature


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