[66]This lady Mary cannot be the princess Mary, an acknowledged natural daughter of king Robert. The latter was beheaded during the troubles at Naples, a year after Boccaccio's death. The poems of Boccaccio declare that he outlived his lady Mary, Fiammetta, as he called her, many years; and his writings give proof that her royal and illegitimate origin was always preserved a secret.
[67]La Fiammetta.
[68]Rime.
[69]Ameto.
[70]Baldelli.
[71]Petrarch's Letters.
[72]This singular circumstance is not noticed by Petrarch in any of his letters. Did the Florentines act thus to punish him for his journey to Avignon, at the time they had invited him to take up his abode among them? Yet, on another occasion, the citizens petitioned the pope to give the poet a benefice within their walls, and so induce him to inhabit their city. Perhaps the expression used in Boccaccio's letter is ironical.
[73]Guignenè.
[74]It is not creditable to the learning of those times to learn, that the libraries of these two great revivers of knowledge were lost to the world soon after their deaths. Boccaccio's, it is true, was destroyed by an accident, being burnt when the convent to which he had left it was consumed by fire. But Petrarch's mouldered away in the palace given by the republic of Venice for its reception and preservation, so that dusty fragments were afterwards found to be all that remained of the venerable parchments which the laureate had expended so much time and labour in collecting.
[75]Baldelli.