Father Dionisio, upon his arrival at Naples, impressed the King with so favourable an opinion of Petrarch that Robert wrote a letter to our poet, enclosing an epitaph of his Majesty’s own composition, on the death of his niece Clementina.  This letter is unhappily lost; but the answer to it is preserved, in which Petrarch tells the monarch that his epitaph rendered his niece an object rather of envy than of lamentation.  “O happy Clementina!” says the poet, “after passing through a transitory life, you have attained a double immortality, one in heaven, and another on earth.”  He then compares the posthumous good fortune of the princess to that of Achilles, who had been immortalized by Homer.  It is possible that King Robert’s letter to Petrarch was so laudatory as to require a flattering answer.  But this reverberated praise is rather overstrained.

Petrarch was now intent on obtaining the honour of Poet Laureate.  His wishes were at length gratified, and in a manner that made the offer more flattering than the crown itself.

Whilst he still remained at Vaucluse, at nine o’clock in the morning of the 1st of September, 1340, he received a letter from the Roman Senate, pressingly inviting him to come and receive the crown of Poet Laureate at Rome.  He must have little notion of a poet’s pride and vanity, who cannot imagine the flushed countenance, the dilated eyes, and the joyously-throbbing heart of Petrarch, whilst he read this letter.  To be invited by the Senate of Rome to such an honour might excuse him for forgetting that Rome was not now what she had once been, and that the substantial glory of his appointment was small in comparison with the classic associations which formed its halo.

As if to keep up the fever of his joy, he received the same day, in the afternoon, at four o’clock, another letter with the same offer, from Roberto Bardi, Chancellor of the University of Paris, in which he importuned him to be crowned as Poet Laureate at Paris.  When we consider the poet’s veneration for Rome, we may easily anticipate that he would give the preference to that city.  That he might not, however, offend his friend Roberto Bardi and the University of Paris, he despatched a messenger to Cardinal Colonna, asking his advice upon the subject, pretty well knowing that his patron’s opinion would coincide with his own wishes.  The Colonna advised him to be crowned at Rome.

The custom of conferring this honour had, for a long time, been obsolete.  In the earliest classical ages, garlands were given as a reward to valour and genius.  Virgil exhibits his conquerors adorned with them.  The Romans adopted the custom from Greece, where leafy honours were bestowed on victors at public games.  This coronation of poets, it is said, ceased under the reign of the Emperor Theodosius.  After his death, during the long subsequent barbarism of Europe, when literature produced only rhyming monks, and when there were no more poets to crown, the discontinuance of the practice was a natural consequence.