d plays I-Spy and leap-frog with himself the
livelong day.

Had the love of Petrarch and Laura ever gone to the point of executive
session, he would straightway have ceased to write about it, and
literature would have been the loser.

It is not likely that either Petrarch or Laura reasoned things out thus
far--we are all puppets upon the chess-board of Time, moved by the gods
of Fate, and the fact that we know it proved for William Ellery Channing
the soul of man. I am both the spectator and the play.

* * * * *

Laura died in her fortieth year of "the plague." Seven months after her
death her husband paid her memory the compliment of taking a second
wife, thus leaving us to assume that the first venture was a happy one,
otherwise he would not have been in such haste to repeat it.

The second wife of Hugh de Sade never stirred the pool of ink from which
Petrarch fished his murex up. He refers to this second wife once by
indirection, thus: "The children of Laura are no longer motherless."

On the death of Laura the poet was overwhelmed with grief. But this
paroxysm of pain soon gave way to a calm reflection, and he realized
that she was still his as much as she ever was. Her death, too, stopped
all flavor of scandal that was in the bond, and thus Petrarch stood
better in the eyes of the world and in his own eyes than he did when
gossip was imminent.

Petrarch expected to be immortalized by his epic poem "Africa," but it
is not read today, even by scholars, except in fragments to see how deep
are the barren sands of his thought.

The sonnets which he calls "fragments, written in the vulgar tongue,"
the Italian, are verses which have made him live. They are human
documents inspired by the living, throbbing heart, and are vital in
their feeling and expression. His "best" poems are fifteen times as
voluminous as his love-poems; they were written in Latin and polished
and corrected until the life was sandpapered out of them.

His love for Laura was an idyllic thing as artificial as a monk's life,
and no more virtuous. It belongs to a romantic age where excess was
atoned for by asceticism, and spasms of vice galled the kibe of negative
virtue.

This love for Laura was largely a lust for the muse.

Fame was the god of Petrarch, and to this god he was forever faithful.
He toiled unremittingly, slavishly, painfully, cruelly for fame--and he
was rewarded, so far as fame can reward.

At