When Petrarch returned from his journey into the North of Europe in 1332,
he balanced the books of his unrequited passion, and, finding that he had
now been in love seven years, thought the time had at last come to call
deliberately on Death. Had Death taken him at his word, he would have
protested that he was only in fun. For we find him always taking good
care of an excellent constitution, avoiding the plague with commendable
assiduity, and in the very year when he declares it absolutely essential
to his peace of mind to die for good and all, taking refuge in the
fortress of Capranica, from a wholesome dread of having his throat cut by
robbers. There is such a difference between dying in a sonnet with a
cambric handkerchief at one's eyes, and the prosaic reality of demise
certified in the parish register! Practically it is inconvenient to be
dead. Among other things, it puts an end to the manufacture of sonnets.
But there seems to have been an excellent understanding between Petrarch
and Death, for he was brought to that grisly monarch's door so often,
that, otherwise, nothing short of a miracle or the nine lives of that
animal whom love also makes lyrical could have saved him. "I consent," he
cries, "to live and die in Africa among its serpents, upon Caucasus, or
Atlas, if, while I live, to breathe a pure air, and after my death a
little corner of earth where to bestow my body, may be allowed me.
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