He chose Petrarch for his model and guide, and in riper manhood became his most intimate friend.

[Footnote H: Solo, e pensoso i più deserti campi Vò misurando à passi tardi, e lenti. 'Petrarch'.]

They were composed at various dates, mostly, it would appear, after 1360, though some are certainly earlier; and it would be difficult to say whether to him or to Petrarch belonged the honour of reviving the form, were it not that, both in the poems themselves and in his correspondance, he explicitly mentions Petrarch as his master in the kind.

A tomb in Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and The starry Galileo and his woes.