The superior sagacity of our poet, together with his pleasing manners, and his increasing reputation for knowledge, ensured to him the most flattering prospects of success.  His conversation was courted by men of rank, and his acquaintance was sought by men of learning.  It was at this time, 1326, that his merit procured him the friendship and patronage of James Colonna, who belonged to one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Italy.

“About the twenty-second year of my life,” Petrarch writes to one of his friends, “I became acquainted with James Colonna.  He had seen me whilst I resided at Bologna, and was prepossessed, as he was pleased to say, with my appearance.  Upon his arrival at Avignon, he again saw me, when, having inquired minutely into the state of my affairs, he admitted me to his friendship.  I cannot sufficiently describe the cheerfulness of his temper, his social disposition, his moderation in prosperity, his constancy in adversity.  I speak not from report, but from my own experience.  He was endowed with a persuasive and forcible eloquence.  His conversation and letters displayed the amiableness of his sincere character.  He gained the first place in my affections, which he ever afterwards retained.”

Such is the portrait which our poet gives of James Colonna.  A faithful and wise friend is among the most precious gifts of fortune; but, as friendships cannot wholly feed our affections, the heart of Petrarch, at this ardent age, was destined to be swayed by still tenderer feelings.  He had nearly finished his twenty-third year without having ever seriously known the passion of love.  In that year he first saw Laura.  Concerning this lady, at one time, when no life of Petrarch had been yet written that was not crude and inaccurate, his biographers launched into the wildest speculations.  One author considered her as an allegorical being; another discovered her to be a type of the Virgin Mary; another thought her an allegory of poetry and repentance.  Some denied her even allegorical existence, and deemed her a mere phantom beauty, with which the poet had fallen in love, like Pygmalion with the work of his own creation.  All these caprices about Laura’s history have been long since dissipated, though the principal facts respecting her were never distinctly verified, till De Sade, her own descendant, wrote his memoirs of the Life of Petrarch.

Petrarch himself relates that in 1327, exactly at the first hour of the 6th of April, he first beheld Laura in the church of St. Clara of Avignon,[A] where neither the sacredness of the place, nor the solemnity of the day, could prevent him from being smitten for life with human love.  In that fatal hour he saw a lady, a little younger than himself[B] in a green mantle sprinkled with violets, on which her golden hair fell plaited in tresses.  She was distinguished from all others by her proud and delicate carriage.  The impression which she made on his heart was sudden, yet it was never effaced.