ntary
evidence as for the most part worthless, and, relying on the internal
evidence of the sonnets and the dialogue, and on the facts of Petrarch's
life as established by his correspondence (a complete series of
Petrarch's letters was published by Giuseppe Fracassetti, in 1859),
inclines to the belief that it was the poet's status as a cleric, and
not a husband and family, which proved a bar to his union with Laura.
With regard, however, to "one piece of documentary evidence," namely,
Laura de Sade's will, Dr. Garnett admits that, if this were producible,
and, on being produced, proved genuine, the coincidence of the date of
the will, April 3, 1348, with a note in Petrarch's handwriting, dated
April 6, 1348, which records the death of Laura, would almost establish
the truth of the abbe's theory "in the teeth of all objections."]

[411] {351} ["He who would seek, as I have done, the last memorials of
the life and death of Petrarch in that sequestered Euganean village
[Arqua is about twelve miles south-west of Padua], will still find them
there. A modest house, apparently of great antiquity, passes for his
last habitation. A chair in which he is said to have died is shown
there. And if these details are uncertain, there is no doubt that the
sarcophagus of red marble, supported on pillars, in the churchyard of
Arqua, contains, or once contained, his mortal remains. Lord Byron and
Mr. Hobhouse visited the spot more than sixty years ago in a sceptical
frame of mind; for doubts had at that time been thrown on the very
existence of Laura; and the varied details of the poet's life, which are
preserved with so much fidelity in his correspondence, were almost
forgotten."--_Petrarch_, by H. Reeve, 1879, p. 14. In a letter to
Hoppner, September 12, 1817, Byron says that he was moved "to turn aside
in a second visit to Arqua." Two years later, October, 1819, he in vain
persuaded Moore "to spare a day or two to go with me to Arqua. I should
like," he said, "to visit that tomb with you--a pair of poetical
pilgrims--eh, Tom, what say you?" But "Tom" was for Rome and Lord John
Russell, and ever afterwards bewailed the lost opportunity "with wonder
and self-reproach" (_Life_, p. 423; _Life_, by Karl Elze, 1872, p.
235).]

[mc] {352} _His mansion and his monument_----.--[MS. M., D. erased.]

[md] ----_formed his sepulchral fane_.--[MS. M.]

[412]
[Compare Wordsworth's _Ode_, "Intimations of," etc., xi. lines 9-11--

"The clouds