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Petrarch, "the worthy clerke" from whom
Chaucer is said to have learned a story or two in Italy for his great
work, was born in 1304, and was also a star of the first magnitude in that
Italian galaxy.
Indeed, it is here worthy of a passing remark, that from that early time
to a later period, many of the great products of English poetry have been
watered by silver rills of imaginative genius from a remote Italian
source. Chaucer's indebtedness has just been noticed. Spenser borrowed his
versification and not a little of his poetic handling in the Faery Queen
from Ariosto. Milton owes to Dante some of his conceptions of heaven and
hell in his Paradise Lost, while his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and
Penseroso, may be called Italian poems done into English.
In the time of Chaucer, this Italian influence marks the extended
relations of English letters; and, serving to remove the trammels of the
French, it gave to the now vigorous and growing English that opportunity
of development for which it had so long waited.


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