1.  Man in his youthful state is the slave of love. 2.  As he advances in age, he feels the inconveniences of his amatory propensities, and endeavours to conquer them by chastity. 3.  Amidst the victory which he obtains over himself, Death steps in, and levels alike the victor and the vanquished. 4.  But Fame arrives after death, and makes man as it were live again after death, and survive it for ages by his fame. 5.  But man even by fame cannot live for ever, if God has not granted him a happy existence throughout eternity.  Thus Love triumphs over Man; Chastity triumphs over Love; Death triumphs over both; Fame triumphs over Death; Time triumphs over Fame; and Eternity triumphs over Time.

The subordinate parts and imagery of the Trionfi have a beauty rather arabesque than classical, and resembling the florid tracery of the later oriental Gothic architecture.  But the whole effect of the poem is pleasing, from the general grandeur of its design.

In summing up Petrarch’s character, moral, political, and poetical, I should not stint myself to the equivocal phrase used by Tacitus respecting Agricola:  Bonum virum facile dixeris, magnum libenter, but should at once claim for his memory the title both of great and good.  A restorer of ancient learning, a rescuer of its treasures from oblivion, a despiser of many contemporary superstitions, a man, who, though no reformer himself, certainly contributed to the Reformation, an Italian patriot who was above provincial partialities, a poet who still lives in the hearts of his country, and who is shielded from oblivion by more generations than there were hides in the sevenfold shield of Ajax—­if this was not a great man, many who are so called must bear the title unworthily.  He was a faithful friend, and a devoted lover, and appears to have been one of the most fascinating beings that ever existed.  Even when his failings were admitted, it must still be said that even his failings leaned to virtue’s side, and, altogether we may pronounce that

    His life was gentle, and the elements
    So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
    And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

[Footnote A:  Before the publication of De Sade’s “Memoires pour la vie de Petrarque” the report was that Petrarch first saw Laura at Vaucluse.  The truth of their first meeting in the church of St. Clara depends on the authenticity of the famous note on the M.S.  Virgil of Petrarch, which is now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.]

[Footnote B:  Petrarch, in his dialogue with St. Augustine, states that he was older than Laura by a few years.]