Note 455 — Chapter XIII

In planting the laurel Petrarch expressed the hope that the presence of Boccaccio might prove "fortunate" to "these little sacred laurels." Boccaccio had protested to Petrarch that he was not worthy of the name of poet. Petrarch insisted that he was. "It is a strange thing," he says, "that you should have aimed at being a poet only to shrink from the name." This affair of the laurel may refer to that incident. "The laurel," says Boccaccio in the Vita di Dante, "which is never struck by lightning, crowns poets...."