He declined the proffered secretaryship.
Prizing his independence above all things, excepting Laura, he remarked to his friends that the yoke of office would not sit lighter on him for being gilded.
In consequence of the dangers he had encountered, a rumour of his death had spread over a great part of Italy.

The age was romantic, with a good deal of the fantastical in its romance.

If the news had been true, and if he had been really dead and buried, it would be difficult to restrain a smile at the sort of honours that were paid to his memory by the less brain-gifted portion of his admirers.

One of these, Antonio di Beccaria, a physician of Ferrara, when he ought to have been mourning for his own deceased patients, wrote a poetical lamentation for Petrarch's death.
The poem, if it deserve such a name, is allegorical; it represents a funeral, in which the following personages parade in procession and grief for the Laureate's death.

Grammar, Rhetoric, and Philosophy are introduced with their several attendants.