ians, to the men he did, he
was raising up an unparalleled age of learning and genius when monks
could only write meagre chronicles, while learning and genius themselves
lay in an enchanted slumber with a suspension of all their vital powers.

There are numerous instances of the forgeries of smaller documents. The
Prayer-book of Columbus, presented to him by the Pope, which the great
discoverer of a new world bequeathed to the Genoese republic, has a
codicil in his own writing, as one of the leaves testifies, but as
volumes composed against its authenticity deny. The famous description
in Petrarch's Virgil, so often quoted, of his first _rencontre_ with
Laura in the church of St. Clair on a Good Friday, 6th April, 1327, it
has been recently attempted to be shown is a forgery. By calculation, it
appears that the 6th April, 1327, fell on a Monday! The Good Friday
seems to have been a blunder of the manufacturer of the note. He was
entrapped by reading the second sonnet, as it appears in the _printed_
editions!

Era il giorno ch' al sol _si scolorana_
_Per la_ pieta del suo fattore i rai.

"It was on the day when the rays of the sun were obscured by compassion
for his Maker." The forger imagined this description alluded to Good
Friday and the eclipse at the Crucifixion. But how stands the passage in
the MS. in the Imperial Library of Vienna, which Abbe Costaing has
found?

Era il giorno ch' al sol _di color raro_
_Parve_ la pieta da suo fattore, _ai rai_
Quand Io fu preso; e non mi guardai
Che ben vostri occhi dentro mi legaro.

"It was on the day that I was captivated, devotion for its Maker
appeared in the rays of a brilliant sun, and I did not well consider
that it was your eyes that enchained me!"

The first meeting, according to the Abbe Costaing, was not in a
_church_, but in a _meadow_--as appears by the ninety-first sonnet. The
Laura of Sade was _not_ the Laura of Petrarch, but Laura de Baux,
unmarried, and who died young, residing in the vicinity of Vaucluse.
Petrarch had often viewed her from his own window, and often enjoyed her
society amidst her family.[217] If the Abbe Costaing's discovery be
confirmed, the good name of Petrarch is freed from the idle romantic
passion for a married woman. It would be curious if the famous story of
the first meeting with Laura in the church of St. Clair originated in
the blunder of the forger's misconception of a passage which was
incorrectly printed, as