two hundred years, governed by bureaucrats.

PETRARCH AND LAURA

As to Vaucluse, I well know the beauties of that charming valley,
and ten years' residence is proof of my affection for the place. I
have shown my love of it by the house which I built there. There I
began my article "Africa," there I wrote the greater part of my
epistles in prose and verse. At Vaucluse I conceived the first idea
of giving an epitome of the Lives of Illustrious Men, and there I
wrote my treatise on a Solitary Life, as well as that on religious
retirement. It was there, also, that I sought to moderate my passion
for Laura, which, alas, solitude only cherished. And so this lonely
valley will be forever sacred to my recollections.

--_Journal of Petrarch_

[Illustration: PETRARCH]

"A literary reputation once attained can never be lost," says Balzac.
This for the reason that we find it much easier to admit a man's
greatness than to refute it. The safest and most solid reputations are
those of writers nobody reads. As long as a man is read he is being
weighed, and the verdict is uncertain, which remark, of course, does not
apply to the books we read with our eyes shut.

Shakespeare's proud position today is possible only through the fact
that he is not read.

We get our Shakespeare from "Bartlett's Quotations": and the statement
made by the good old lady that Shakespeare used more quotations than any
other man who ever lived is true, although she should have added that he
used blessed few quotation-marks.

In all my life I never knew anybody, save one woman and a little girl,
who read Shakespeare in the original. I know a deal of Shakespeare,
although I never read one of his plays, and never could witness a
Shakespearean performance without having the fidgets. All the
Shakespeare I have, I caught from being exposed to people who have the
microbe.

I never yet met any one who read Petrarch. But every so-called educated
person is compelled to admit the genius of Petrarch.

We know the gentleman by sight; that is, we know the back of his books.

And then we know that he loved Laura--Petrarch and Laura!

We walk into Paradise in pairs--just as the toy animals go into a Noah's
Ark. Shakespeare is coupled thus: Shakespeare and----

He wrote his sonnets to Her, exactly as did Dante, Petrarch and
Rossetti. A sonnet is a house of life enclosing