This meagre notice contains all that we really know of the woman whose name is associated for all time with that of Francesco Petrarca. While she is, it is hardly necessary to say, the theme of nearly all his Italian lyrics, little or no reference is made to her in the Latin works, with two notable exceptions, to be spoken of later. In the vast collection of prose letters two or three vague allusions to his love for her may be found. Once only is Laura mentioned by name,--in a letter to Giacomo Colonna, who had begun to suspect that the much besung sweetheart was but a play upon words--a personification of the longed-for poet's laurel (_Laurea_). "Would that your humorous suggestion were true," Petrarch replies; "would to God it were all a pretence, and not a madness!"[45] From none of these sources do we learn anything of the lady herself. Many ingenious theories have been based upon the descriptions in the _Canzoniere,_ which, though often sufficiently detailed, are however poetic, allegorical, and conflicting. The futility of such deductions can be made clear by a single example. Upon no other topic does the poet dwell with more evident pleasure, or more varied detail, than the eyes of his mistress; yet it cannot be determined whether these were blue or dark.[46]
While it must, therefore, be acknowledged that attempts to learn more of the object of Petrarch's devotion have proved unavailing, it is possible, from the material at our disposal, to study satisfactorily and profitably the poet's attitude toward one great preoccupation of humanity, the love of woman. The genuineness of the passion that fills the sonnets, no one who reads the Latin works can doubt, although it is touched upon in only a very few instances. Its reality is attested by two passages of considerable length, which also serve to explain the conflict of emotions depicted in the Italian lyrics. One of these, a Latin metrical epistle to Giacomo Colonna, we may neglect[47]; the other bit of self-analysis it behooves us to examine somewhat carefully, since it casts a flood of light, not only upon the extraordinary man with whom we are dealing, but upon a fundamental contrast between mediæval and modern thought.[48]