But rather for the grace and skill they show.

1470.

The colophon to the Petrarch claims credit for the restoration of a true text, a point on which the scholars of the Renaissance were as keen, up to their lights, as those of our own day, and which is often emphasized in their laudatory verses as the one supreme merit:

Que fuerant multis quondam confusa tenebris

Petrarce Laure metra sacrata sue,

Christophori et pariter feruens Cyllenia cura

Transcripsit nitido lucidiora die.

Vtque superueniens nequeat corrumpere tempus

En Vindelinus erea plura dedit.

The songs that Petrarch to his Laura made