CHAPTER VI
PETRARCH AND LAURA
Petrarch's activity as a scholar claimed so much larger a portion of his time and thoughts than his Canzoniere, and the bulk of the latter, considerable as it is, is so small in comparison with that of the mass of his writings, that Symonds seems almost justified in depreciating his work as an Italian lyrist in comparison with his influence as a humanist. Yet Petrarch's Latin works were like the falling rain, which passes away as a distinct existence, though long invisibly operative as a fertilising agent; while his poetry, confined to a definite channel by the restraints of consummate diction and style, flows in a crystal stream for ever. Here and there in other men's books, no doubt, an isolated love-strain of higher quality may be found, but nothing approaching the Canzoniere as an epitomised encyclopædia of passion. The best is transcendently excellent; and if many of the pieces, especially near the beginning, might well have been dispensed with as far as their individual desert is concerned, they still have their value as notes in a great harmony. As his translator Cayley well remarks, "No poet has so fully represented the whole world of love in every tone and variety of play and earnest, delight and pain,
