[35]Epist. ad Posterit.
[36]Ibid.
[37]Epist. ad Posterit.
[38]Epist. Fam.
[39]Sonnets 53, 54. The Abbé de Sâde notices these sonnets. They prove that the order of time is not preserved in the arrangement of his sonnets; as his letters prove that this journey through the forest of Ardennes preceded many events recorded in poems which are represented as if of an earlier date.
[40]Epist. Fam.
[41]The envoy shows that this canzone was written in Italy, probably when Petrarch was residing at Parma, a few years after. Yet being able to quote only a poem of which there exists a worthy translation, I could not refrain from extracting it; and though alluding to another country, and finished there, it is almost impossible not to believe that it was conceived at Vaucluse, and that it breathes the spirit that filled him in that solitude.
[42]This was not a painting, but a small marble medallion. It has been, since the fourteenth century, in possession of the Peruzzi family at Florence. Behind the portrait of Laura are four Italian verses, not inserted in any editions of Petrarch:—
"Splendida luce cui chiaro se vede
Quel bel che può mostrar nel mondo amore,
O vero exemplo del sopran valore
E d'ogni meraviglia intiera fede."
There is a medallion also of Petrarch, similar in form to the other, behind which is inscribed—