The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born in Tuscany, 1304. Died at Argua, near Padua, 1374. Aged 70.] The crown around the brow of Petrarch has many gems. He is poet, diplomatist, scholar, and restorer of ancient letters. To the world, he is the great Italian sonnetteer. This extremely artificial metrical scheme, which seems, however, singularly congenial to his native speech, afforded him the temptation, in the means, to write incessant effusions on one love, really or ideally entertained. He was an ecclesiastic under a law of celibacy. Thus separated from the object of his presumed affections, he allied his soul to hers in verse. His love-strains are studies, without number, of the passion, in its endlessly varying moods and moments--half of them wreaths laid at the feet of the living Laura--half, strewings on her untimely tomb. The flowers, disclosed by the rapidly advancing Spring of the language, breathe the freshness, sweetness, and innocent grace of the season. Ever since, every son of song in Italy strikes this lute of a few chords, but Petrarch remains its Apollo. [By Carlo Finelli.]