Who was the object of this unique passion and perpetual grief? So obscure are the circumstances that some have deemed Laura, like the candlemaker’s widow at Père la Chaise, “une métaphore, un symbole.” Petrarch’s friend, the Bishop of Lombès, suspected as much, but Petrarch indignantly protested, and after a while refuted the surmise by a manuscript note in his Virgil, to be treated more fully hereafter. Apart from this, it seems strange that scepticism should have survived his avowal, on a serious occasion, the composition of his address to posterity; where he speaks of his affection for Laura as his sole incitement to worthy fame, and of her own reputation as something entirely independent of his praises. “What little I am, such as it is, I am through her; and if I have attained to any fame or glory, I had never possessed it if the few grains of virtue which Nature had deposited in my soul had not been cultivated by her with such noble affection. What else did I desire in my youth than to please her, and her alone, who alone had pleased me?” The strongest testimony, however, is that of the poems themselves, which are full of traits and descriptions evidently derived from real life, and which would lose all their charm if they could be deemed imaginary. Take this for example: _As Love pursued me in the wonted glade, Wary as he, who weening foe to find, Guards every pass, and looks before, behind, I stood in mail of ancient thought arrayed: When, sideways turned, I saw by sudden shade The sun impeded, and, on earth outlined Her shape, who, if aright conceives my mind, Meetest for immortality was made. I said unto my heart, 'Why dost thou fear?’ But ere my heart could open to my thought, The beams whereby I melt shone all around; And, as when flash by thunder-peal is caught, My eyes encounter of those eyes most dear And smiling welcome simultaneous found._ How natural and pleasing if the incident be real! and how marvellous the poetical power which can raise such an edifice out of such a trifle! On the other hand, how insipid if the little event, instead of a ripple on the surface of life arrested by the poet’s art ere it has had time to pass into nothingness, be but a fiction to enable him to say a pretty thing! The author of so frigid a contrivance could never have been the author of the _Canzoniere_.