No More Learning

Petrarch had scarcely arrived at Parma when he received a letter from
Luchino Visconti, who had lately received the lordship of that city.
Hearing of Petrarch's arrival there, the Prince, being at Milan, wrote
to the poet, requesting some orange plants from his garden, together
with a copy of verses. Petrarch sent him both, accompanied with a
letter, in which he praises Luchino for his encouragement of learning
and his cultivation of the Muses.

The plague was now increasing in Italy; and, after it had deprived
Petrarch of many dear friends, it struck at the root of all his
affections by attacking Laura. He describes his apprehensions on this
occasion in several of his sonnets. The event confirmed his melancholy
presages; for a letter from his friend Socrates informed him that Laura
had died of the plague on the 1st of April, 1348. His biographers may
well be believed, when they tell us that his grief was extreme. Laura's
husband took the event more quietly, and consoled himself by marrying
again, when only seven months a widower.

Petrarch, when informed of her death, wrote that marginal note upon his
copy of Virgil, the authenticity of which has been so often, though
unjustly, called in question. His words were the following:--

"Laura, illustrious for her virtues, and for a long time celebrated in
my verses, for the first time appeared to my eyes on the 6th of April,
1327, in the church of St. Clara, at the first hour of the day. I was
then in my youth. In the same city, and at the same hour, in the year
1348, this luminary disappeared from our world. I was then at Verona,
ignorant of my wretched situation. Her chaste and beautiful body was
buried the same day, after vespers, in the church of the Cordeliers.
Her
soul returned to its native mansion in heaven. I have written this with
a pleasure mixed with bitterness, to retrace the melancholy remembrance
of 'MY GREAT LOSS. ' This loss convinces me that I have nothing
now left worth living for, since the strongest cord of my life is
broken. By the grace of God, I shall easily renounce a world where my
hopes have been vain and perishing. It is time for me to fly from
Babylon when the knot that bound me to it is untied. "

This copy of Virgil is famous, also, for a miniature picture expressing
the subject of the AEneid; which, by the common consent of connoisseurs
in painting, is the work of Simone Memmi. Mention has already been made
of the friendly terms that subsisted between that painter and our poet;
whence it may be concluded that Petrarch, who received this precious MS.
in 1338, requested of Simone this mark of his friendship, to render it
more valuable.

When the library of Pavia, together with the city, was plundered by the
French in 1499, and when many MSS. were carried away to the library of
Paris, a certain inhabitant of Pavia had the address to snatch this copy
of Virgil from the general rapine. This individual was, probably,
Antonio di Pirro, in whose hands or house the Virgil continued till the
beginning of the sixteenth century, as Vellutello attests in his article
on the origin of Laura. From him it passed to Antonio Agostino;
afterwards to Fulvio Orsino, who prized it very dearly. At Orsino's
death it was bought at a high price by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, and
placed in the Ambrosian library, which had been founded by him with much
care and at vast expense.

Until the year 1795, this copy of Virgil was celebrated only on account
of the memorandum already quoted, and a few short marginal notes,
written for illustrations of the text; but, a part of the same leaf
having been torn and detached from the cover, the librarians, by chance,
perceived some written characters. Curiosity urged them to unglue it
with the greatest care; but the parchment was so conglutinated with the
board that the letters left their impression on the latter so palely and
weakly, that the librarians had great difficulty in making out the
following notice, written by Petrarch himself: "Liber hic furto mihi
subreptus fuerat, anno domini mcccxxvi. , in Kalend.