The personal interest that he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is that which most interests and stirs us. The Divine Comedy is not only the most lifelike drama of the thoughts and feelings that moved men at that time, but it is also the most spontaneous and clear reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, who remakes history after his own passions, and who is the real chastiser of the sins and rewarder of the virtues. He defined the destiny of Italian literature in the Middle Ages, and began the great era of the Renaissance.
4. PETRARCH.--Petrarch (1304-1374) belonged to a respected Florentine family. His father was the personal friend of Dante, and a partaker of the same exile. While at Avignon, then the seat of the papal court, on one occasion he made an excursion to the fountain of Vaucluse, taking with him his son, the future poet, then in the tenth year of his age. The wild and solitary aspect of the place inspired the boy with an enthusiasm beyond his years, leaving an impression which was never afterwards effaced, and which affected his future life and writings. As Petrarch grew up, unlike the haughty, taciturn, and sarcastic Dante, he seems to have made friends wherever he went. With splendid talents, engaging manners, a handsome person, and an affectionate and generous disposition, he became the darling of his age, a man whom princes delighted to honor. At the age of twenty-three, he first met Laura de Sade in a church at Avignon. She was only twenty years of age, and had been for three years the wife of a patrician of that city. Laura was not more distinguished for her beauty and fortune than for the unsullied purity of her manners in a licentious court, where she was one of the chief ornaments. The sight of her beauty inspired the young poet with an affection which was as pure and virtuous as it was tender and passionate. He poured forth in song the fervor of his love and the bitterness of his grief. Upwards of three hundred sonnets, written at various times, commemorate all the little circumstances of this attachment, and describe the favors which, during an acquaintance of fifteen or twenty years, never exceeded a kind word, a look less severe than usual, or a passing expression of regret at parting. He was not permitted to visit at Laura's house; he had no opportunity of seeing her except at mass, at the brilliant levees of the pope, or in private assemblies of beauty and fashion: but she forever remained the dominant object of his existence. He purchased a house at Vaucluse, and there, shut in by lofty and craggy heights, the river Sorgue traversing the valley on one side, amidst hills clothed with umbrageous trees, cheered only by the song of birds, the poet passed his lonely days. Again and again he made tours through Italy, Spain, and Flanders, during one of which he was crowned with the poet's laurel at Rome, but he always returned to Vaucluse, to Avignon, to Laura. Thus years passed away. Laura became the mother of a numerous family, and time and care made havoc of her youthful beauty. Meanwhile, the sonnets of Petrarch had spread her fame throughout France and Italy, and attracted many to the court of Avignon, who were surprised and disappointed at the sight of her whom they had believed to be the loveliest of mortals. In 1347, during the absence of the poet from Avignon, Laura fell a victim to the plague, just twenty-one years from the day that Petrarch first met her. Now all his love was deepened and consecrated, and the effusions of his poetic genius became more melancholy, more passionate, and more beautiful than ever. He declined the offices and honors that his countrymen offered him, and passed his life in retirement. He was found one morning by his attendants dead in his library, his head resting on a book.