Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch ‘qui est regardé comme le pere du sonnet’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304.
The learned Menage has this epitaph on Sannazarius
Ci git, dont l'esprit fût si beau,
Sannazar, ce poete habile,
Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile,
Plus encore que par son tombeau.
The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,
Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;
No—make me mistress to the man I love
are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa—at least the thought.