Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/89

Rh is now regarded as incontestable. That two ladies of the name of Laura were dying at or near Avignon at the same time is clearly improbable. But is the will itself authentic? or may it not have been altered or interpolated? The Abbé cites it as a document in his family archives; its existence is attested by several persons in the eighteenth century; but it does not appear to have been submitted to the scrutiny of any expert, nor can we learn whether such an examination has ever been made since, or whether the testament is now producible. Should its authenticity ever be demonstrated, but hardly otherwise, we shall be almost compelled to embrace a belief liable in every other point of view to formidable objections.

Although Laura, as depicted by Petrarch, is the most ethereal feminine ideal ever conceived, his passion was certainly not of the Platonic kind. The contrary has been asserted, but is contradicted by every page of the Canzoniere, which is full of reproaches to Laura for her cruelty, incomprehensible if she was not withholding very substantial favours. He certainly did not want for encouragements of a more spiritual nature:

The mist of pallor in such beauteous wise The sweetness of her smile did overscreen, That my thrilled hearty upon my visage seen, Sprang to encounter it in swift surprise. How soul by soul is scanned in Paradise Then knew I, unto whom disclosed had been That thought pathetic by all gaze unseen Save mine, who solely for such sight have eyes.