The letter to Boccaccio accompanying the Latin translation of the story was probably the last that Petrarch ever wrote. The life of this great and good man had nearly arrived at its conclusion. On the morning of the 19th of July, 1374, he was found by his attendants in his library, his head resting on a book. As he often passed whole hours and even days in this attitude, it at first excited no peculiar attention; but the immovability of his posture at length grew alarming, and on inspection it was found that he was no more. The intelligence of his death spread through Arquà, the Euganean hills, and Padua, and occasioned general consternation: people flocked from far and near to attend his funeral. Francesco da Carrara, with all the nobility of the city of Padua, was present. The bishop, with the chapter and clergy, performed the ceremony. The funeral oration was pronounced by Bonaventura da Peraga, of the order of the hermits of St. Augustin. The body was first interred in a chapel of the church at Arquà, dedicated to the Virgin, which Petrarch had himself built. A short time after, his son-in-law, Francesco Brossano, erected a marble monument opposite the church, and caused the body to be transferred to it; inscribing on the tomb four bad Latin verses, which it is said that Petrarch himself composed, ordering that no epitaph of greater pretension should record his death. Petrarch directed in his will that none should weep his death. "Tears," he says, "are useless to the dead, and they injure the living:" he requested only that alms should be given to the poor, that they might pray for his soul. He continues, "Let them do what they will with my body; it imports nothing to me." He left Francesco Brossano his heir, and begs him, as his beloved son, to divide the money he should find into two parts; to keep one himself, and to give the other to the person he has mentioned to him. This is said to mean his daughter. He left several legacies to hospitals and religious houses. He bequeathed his good lute to Thomas Barbari, wherewith to sing the praises of God; and to Boccaccio he left fifty golden florins, to buy a robe lined with fur, for his winter studies; apologising at the same time for leaving so trifling a sum to so great a man. This is a brief and imperfect sketch of Petrarch's life--drawn from the ample materials which his Latin prose works afford, and the careful researches of various biographers, particularly of the Abbé de Sâde, who ascertained, by infinite labour and perseverance, several doubtful facts concerning the persons with whom the poet's life is chiefly connected. Much more might be said of one whose history is pregnant with profound and various interest. It will be enough if these pages contain a faithful portrait, and impress the reader with a just sense, of his honest worth, his admirable genius, his high-toned feelings, and the many virtues that adorned his long career. [Footnote 27: Epist. ad Posterit.]