Part iv.

15: Probably some three years after the journey to the north.

16: See below, p. 373 _sq_. (... and that they had caught the eye ...)

17: The castle of Cavaillon is close by the valley of the Sorgue.

18: September 1, 1340, when Petrarch was thirty-six years old.

19: The invitations to Rome and Paris to receive the laurel crown have a history, as the reader will easily infer. See below, p. 100 _sqq_.

20: Robert (who died in 1343) was the grandson of that Charles of Anjou (the brother of St. Louis) who had been called in by the popes to succeed the house of Hohenstaufen in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. He was Petrarch's sovereign (_Fam_., iv., 3), for Avignon belonged to him as Count of Provence, until sold to the popes by Robert's successor in 1348. Robert had resided at Avignon, 1318-1324. A letter from Petrarch to Robert, dated December 26, 1338, is preserved, as well as a second one (Pisa, April 21, 1341), describing his coronation at Rome: _Fam._, iv., 3, 7.

21: The Latin--ut eam (scil. Africam) sibi inscribi magno pro munere posceret--may perhaps mean that the king asked that the book be dedicated to him as a _great favour_. If, however, Petrarch was rewarded for the attention, he was only one of the first to enjoy a source of revenue which was well known to later Humanists.

22: Upon Easter Sunday, April 8, 1341.

23: See below, p. 105 _sq._ (As he tells us in his Letter to Posterity...)

24: The great epic was never really finished (_cf. Fam_., xiii., 11), and Petrarch came in his old age to dislike even the mention of it. Corradini's edition is the best we have of the poem. An analysis of the _Africa_ may be found in Körting, _op. cit_., 654 _sqq._

25: Petrarch returned to Vaucluse in 1342, when he was toward _thirty-eight_ years old. There is an air of _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ noticeable elsewhere in the letter. It was, for example, probably later, in 1344, on a second visit to Parma, that he bought his house, and then went to Verona, where he found the letters of Cicero.

26: 1349.

27: Giacomo was killed by his nephew, December, 1350.

28: The autobiography breaks off abruptly here; we know not why.

29: The fact that Petrarch mentions the death of Urban V., which occurred in December, 1370, indicates that the autobiography was written during the last three years of its author's life.

30: See the pathetic passage in the _Convito_, i., ch. 3.

31: _Fam_., xxi., 15 (vol. iii., p. 110).

32: _Fam_., vi., 3 (vol. i., p. 324).

33: Cantiunculæ inanes, falsis et obscœnis muliercularum laudibus refertæ.--_Fam_., x., 3 (vol. ii., p. 73).

34: See below, Part VI.

35: _De Vulgari Eloquio_, lib. i., cap. 13.

36: See _Sen_., xv., 1 (_Opera_, 946).

37: _Fam_., iv., 16 (vol. i., p. 246).

38: _Sen_., xv., I (_Opera_, 947).

39: _Fam_., ix., 5 (toward the end). _Cf._ Körting, _op. cit_., 99 _sqq_.

40: See Pastor, _Geschichte der Päpste_, vol. i., p. 3, n. 1, who asserts that "officium quotidianum celebrare," in _De Otio Religiosorum_, does not refer to the celebration of the mass, as previous writers inferred.

41: Nos autem cui mundus est patria, velut piscibus æquor.--_De Vulgari Eloquio_, lib. i., cap. 6.

42: Described by M. Faucon, in the _Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome_, Fas. 43, 50.

43: _Ep. sine Titulo_, No. 7; also _Sen_., x., 2.

44: See the facsimile of this famous entry in Geiger's _Humanismus_, p. 44, and the corrected transcription furnished by M. de Nolhac, _op. cit_., pp. 407, 408.

45: _Fam_., ii., 9 (vol. i., p. 124).

46: Many attempts have been made to establish some theory of Laura's life; the most plausible, by reason of the documentary evidence which he adduces, is that given in the eighteenth century by De Sade, in his well-known _Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque_ (vol. i., pp. 111 _sqq_., and appendix; also _Pièces Justificatives_, at the end of vol. iii., containing Laura di Noves's marriage contract, etc.). Even if the documents were not forged or modified by the lawyers of Avignon, in view of De Sade's asserted descent from Laura, and even if, as is not certain, they refer at all to Petrarch's Laura, we learn little or nothing from them. It may be inferred from the _Canzoniere_ that Laura belonged to a good family, and almost everyone (except Geiger) agrees, nowadays, that there is every reason to suppose that she was married, since the freedom she appears to have enjoyed and the ornaments she wore, as well as Petrarch's use of the word _Mulier_, all seem to render the assumption a natural one. Any other view would indeed be out of harmony with the habits of an Italian lover of the fourteenth century. The reader who wishes to pursue a somewhat fruitless line of research may compare the views of De Sade with those of Geiger, _Petrarka_, pp. 211 _sqq_., and Körting, _op. cit_., pp. 687 _sqq_., and may proceed from the references there given to the sources themselves, such as they are.

47: _Ep. Poet. Lat_., i., 7, lines 38 _sqq_. A German version of these will be found in Körting, _op. cit_., pp. 689 _sqq_.

48: The passage here referred to is in the third book of the Confessions (_Suum Secretum_), _Opera_, pp. 352 _sqq_. Those portions which relate to his love for Laura have been translated into German by Geiger, _Petrarka_, 231 _sqq_., and summarised by Körting, _op. cit.,_ pp. 639 _sqq_. The whole work is translated by Develay into French.

49: Peter Lombard reproduces, in the middle of the twelfth century, much of Augustine's reasoning, in his _Sentences_, a work destined to be the standard theological manual for generations to follow.

50: _Cf. Anecdotes historiques tirés du recueil inédit d'Etienne de Bourbon, publiés pour la Société de l'Histoire de France par Leroy de la Marche_, 1867. Professor Crane, of Cornell, has edited the _Exempla of Jacques de Vitry_ for the Folk-Lore Society, London, 1890.

51: This subject will be considered later. See below, Part VI.

52: _Cf_. the lines:--

Onde s' alcun bel frutto Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme. Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto, Colto da voi; e' l pregio è vostro in tutto--

in the canzone beginning, Perchè la vita.

53: For Petrarch's views of marriage see _Fam_., xxii., 1, as well as several unworthy dialogues in _De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ, e. g._, i., 45-47; ii., 18, 20, 22.

54: Cogita quantum professio tua discordet a moribus.--_Opera_, p. 363.

55: Magnæ corporis magnæ animi vires sunt, quæ simul et litteris sufficiant et uxori.--_Fam_., xx., 4 (vol. iii., p. 21).

56: Two or three examples of such descriptions will be found below, Part. IV.

57: See his enthusiastic letter to Giacomo Colonna, who had invited him to undertake the journey.--_Fam_., ii., 9.

58: _Convito_, iv., 5.

59: _Convito_, iv., 5.

60: See below, Part V.

61: All authorities agree as to the fearful degradation of Rome during the absence of the popes.

62: _Fam_., ii., 14.

63: Petrarch confesses that he owed the crown to Robert. _Ecl_., x., 370 _sqq_.

64: _Fam_., iv., 3 (the opening lines).

65: _Fam_., iv., 2 (vol. i., p. 206).

66: Recolo ... in hoc ipso capitolio romano ubi nunc insistimus tot tantosque vates ad culmen preclari magisterii provectos emeritam lauream reportasse ... post statium pampineum illustrem poetam qui domitiani temporibus floruit nullum legimus tali honore decoratum.--Hortis, _Scritti Inediti_, p. 316.

67: _Rerum Mem_., end of book i.; an interesting estimate of Robert.

68: _Ep. Poet. Lat_., ii., 1.

69: _Cf._ Hortis, _op. cit_., chap, i., "La Laurea del Petrarca."

70: _Ibid_., 311 _sqq_.

71: _Georgics_, iii., 291, 292, as translated by Rhoades.

72: _Op. cit_., p. 174. _Cf._ Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_., vi., pp. 207 _sqq_.

73: _Cf._ Fracassetti, _Let. delle Cos. Fam._, i., 525 _sqq_.

74: The canzone beginning, Quel c' ha nostra natura in se più degno.

75: See Fracassetti, _op. cit_., i., 527.

76: In the dedicatory preface to that work the reader will find an interesting review of Azzo's career.

77: _Var_., 16 (vol. iii., p. 337), also _Var_., 4. For the whole matter see Fracassetti, _Let. delle Cos. Fam_., i., pp. 525 _sqq._

78: _Ep. Poet. Lat._, ii., 5.

79: _Fam_., v., 3, 4, and 5. In the last of these there is a fine description of a terrible storm.

80: _Fam_., xxiv., 3; also Voigt, _op. cit._, p. 42. It has been satisfactorily proved that Petrarch was unaware of the existence of the important collection _Ad Familiares. Cf_. de Nolhac, _op. cit_., 94 and 211 _sqq_.

81: See below, Part V.

82: _Fam_., xii., 7 (vol. ii., p. 186).

83: Ex ea urbe nati sumus, an inexact expression, since neither was born in Florence, but a confession that they both felt themselves to be Florentine citizens.

84: _Sen_., ii., 1 (_Opera_, p. 751). Note Dante's bitterly sarcastic characterisation of the Florentine readiness to express an opinion, in the _Purgatorio_, vi., especially lines 127 _sqq_.:

Molti han giustizia in cuor; ma tardi scocca, Per non venir senza consiglio all' arco; Ma 'l popol tuo l' ha in sommo della bocca.

85: _Fam_., xi., 16 and 17.

86: _Fam_., xiii., 5.

87: _Ep. Poet. Lat_., iii., 24.

88: _Fam_., xvi., 12 (vol. ii., p. 403). _Cf._ also _Fam_., xvii., 10.

89: _Cf_. close of _Fam_., xvi., 12. For Boccaccio's words of protest, see Corazzini's edition of his letters, p. 47 _sqq_. Nelli did not join in the criticisms of the other friends, but advised him to do as he pleased. See his letter (x.), in the edition of Cochin.

90: See the amusing instances cited by Voigt, _op. cit_., i., 446 _sqq_.

91: _Cf_. Dietrich von Niehm, _De Scismate_, ed. Erler, p. 94.

92: _Sen_., viii., 3 (_Opera_, p. 836).

93: _Historia di Milano_ (ed. of 1565), p. 567.

94: _Fam_., xviii., 16.

95: See below, Part V.

96: For the humanistic tendencies at Prague, see Voigt, _op. cit_., ii., 261 _sqq_., and Friedjung, _Kaiser Karl IV. und sein Antheil am geistigen Leben seiner Zeit_, Vienna, 1876.

97: _Fam_., xxiii., 2 (vol. iii., p. 184).

98: See above, p. 31 _sqq_. (He would gladly reside in the city...)

99: _Opera_, pp. 372 _sqq_.

Petrarch's Preface to his First Collection of Letters_

_To his Friend "Socrates"_[1]

What now, brother? We have tried almost everything, and nowhere have we found peace. When may we hope for that, and where shall we seek it? Time, as the saying is, has slipped between our fingers. Our early hopes are buried with our friends. The year 1348 has left us solitary and bereaved; and has taken from us what all the wealth of Ormus and of Ind could never replace.[2]

Such final losses are irreparable, and the wounds inflicted by death can never be healed. There is but one source of consolation; we shall soon follow those who have gone before. How long we must wait we know not. But this we do know, it cannot be for long; and the delay, however short, will not be without its trials. Yet let us, here at the outset at least, refrain from lamentation.

I do not know, brother, what anxieties are weighing upon you or what your present preoccupations may be. As for me, I am making up my bundles and, as those on the verge of departure are wont to do, I am trying to decide what to take with me, what to distribute among my friends, and what to throw into the fire. At any rate, I have nothing to sell. I possess, or rather am burdened by, more than I supposed. I found, for example, a vast store of scattered and neglected writings of different kinds in the house. I have laboriously exhumed boxes, buried in dust, and bundles of manuscript, half-destroyed by time. The importunate mouse as well as the insatiable bookworm, have plotted against me, and, a devotee of Pallas, I have been entangled in the toils of Pallas's enemy, the spider. There is, however, no obstacle which may not be overcome by persistent effort. Surrounded by the confused masses of letters and manuscripts I began, following my first impulse, to consign everything to the flames, with a view to escaping from the inglorious task of assorting the papers. Then, as one thought springs from another, it occurred to me that, like a traveller weary by reason of the long road, I might well look back as from an eminence, and step by step review the history of my younger days.

This counsel prevailed. It seemed to me, if not an exalted undertaking, at least not a disagreeable one, to recall the shifting feelings and sentiments of earlier times. But, taking up the disordered papers at random, I was astonished to see how distorted and blurred the past appeared to me, not of course that it, but rather that my mental vision, had changed, so that I hardly recognised my former self. Still, some things that I happened upon called up pleasant reminiscences of long ago. Some of the productions moved with the free step of prose, some were held in check by Homeric reins (I have rarely used those of Isocrates),[3] others, destined to charm the ear of the people, also obeyed their own appropriate laws. The last mentioned style of verse, revived, it is said, not many generations ago, among the Sicilians, spread in a short time throughout Italy, and even beyond. This kind of poetry was held in great repute by the earliest writers among the Greeks and Romans, and the common people of Rome and Athens are said to have been accustomed to the rhythmical lyrics only.

This chaotic medley kept me busy for several days, and, although I felt the potent charm and natural partiality which are associated with all one's own productions, the love for my more important works finally got the upper hand. These had suffered a long interruption and were still uncompleted, although they were anxiously awaited by not a few. The shortness of life was borne in upon me. I feared, I must confess, its snares and pitfalls. What indeed is more transient than life, and what more certain than death? It occurred to me to ask what foundation I had laid, and what would remain to me for all my toil and vigils. It seemed a rash, an insane thing, to have undertaken such long and enduring labours in the course of so brief and uncertain an existence, and thus to scatter my talents, which would scarcely suffice for the successful accomplishment of a single undertaking. Moreover, as you well know, another task awaits me more glorious than these in proportion as actions merit more enduring praise than words.[4]

But why dwell longer upon this matter? It will perhaps seem incredible to you, but it is none the less true, that I committed to Vulcan for correction a thousand or more scattered poems of all kinds and letters of friendly intercourse, not because I found nothing in them to my liking, but because they involved more work than pleasure. I did this, however, with a sigh, as I am not ashamed to confess. But with a mind so occupied it was necessary to resort even to somewhat harsh measures for relief, just as an overburdened ship must sometimes be lightened by the sacrifice of valuable cargo.

After disposing of these I noticed, lying in a corner, a few papers which had been preserved rather by accident than intention, or had, at some former time, been copied by my assistants, and so in one way or the other had escaped the perils of advancing age. I say a few--I fear they will seem a great many to the reader, and far too numerous to the copyist. I was more indulgent to these, and allowed them to live, not so much on account of their worthiness as of my convenience, for they did not involve any additional labour of my own. As I considered them with regard to the natural inclinations of two of my friends, the prose fell to you, while the verse I decided to dedicate to our friend Barbato. I recollected that this used to be your preference, and that I had promised to follow your wishes. My mood was such that I was on the point of destroying everything which I came across, not even sparing those writings just mentioned, when you both seemed to appear to me, one on my right and one on my left, and, grasping my hands, you admonished me in a friendly manner not to do violence at once to my good faith and your anticipations. This was the chief reason why these were spared, for otherwise, believe me, they would have gone up in smoke like the rest.

You will read your portion of what remains, such as it is, not only patiently, but even eagerly. I do not venture to repeat the boast of Apuleius of Madaura, "Reader, you have but to listen to be charmed"; for on what grounds could I venture to promise pleasure to the reader? But, you at least, will read the letters, my good Socrates, and, as you are very fond of your friends, you may discover some charm in them. Your partiality for the author will make his style pleasing (indeed what beauty of style is likely to be perceived by an unfriendly judge?); it is vain to adorn what already delights. If anything gratifies you in these letters of mine, I freely concede that it is not really mine but yours; that is to say, the credit is due not to my ability but to your good-will. You will find no great eloquence or vigour of expression in them. Indeed I do not possess these powers, and if I did, in ever so high a degree, there would be no place for them in this kind of composition. Even Cicero, who was renowned for these abilities, does not manifest them in his letters, nor even in his treatises, where, as he himself says, the language is characterised by a certain evenness and moderation. In his orations, on the other hand, he displayed extraordinary powers, pouring out a clear and rapid stream of eloquence. This oratorical style Cicero used frequently for his friends, and against his enemies and those of the republic.[5] Cato resorted to it often on behalf of others, and for himself four and forty times. In this mode of composition I am wholly inexperienced, for I have been far away from the responsibilities of state. And while my reputation may sometimes have been assailed by slight murmurs, or secret whisperings, I have so far never suffered any attack in the courts which I must needs avenge or parry. Hence, as it is not my profession to use my weapons of speech for the defence of others, I do not frequent the tribunals, nor have I ever learned to loan my tongue. I have, indeed, a deep repugnance for such a life, for I am by nature a lover of silence and solitude, an enemy of the courts, and a contemner of wealth. It was fortunate for me that I was freed from the necessity of resorting to a weapon which I might not have been able to use if I had tried. I have therefore made no attempt to employ an oratorical style, which, even if it had been at my disposal, would have been uncalled for in this instance. But you will accept this homely and familiar language in the same friendly spirit as you do the rest, and take in good part a style well adapted to the sentiments we are accustomed to express in ordinary conversation.

All my critics, however, are not like you, for they do not all think the same, nor do they all love me as you do. But how can I hope to please everybody, when I have always striven to gratify a few only? There are three poisons which kill sound criticism, love, hate, and envy. Beware lest through too much love you should make public what might better be kept concealed. As you are guided by love, so others may be influenced by other passions. Between the blindness of love and that of jealousy there is indeed a great difference in origin, but not always in effect. Hate, to which I have assigned a middle place, I neither merit nor fear. Still it can easily be so arranged that you may keep and read my trifling productions for your own exclusive pleasure, thinking of nothing except the incidents in our lives and those of our friends which they recall. Should you do this, it would be most gratifying to me. In this way your request will have been satisfied and my reputation will be safe. Beyond this I do not deceive myself with the vain hope of favour. For how can we imagine even a friend, if he be not an _alter ego_, reading without weariness such a mass of miscellaneous and conflicting recollections? There is no unity in the themes or composition of the letters, and with the various matters treated went varying moods, which were rarely happy and usually despondent.

Epicurus, a philosopher held in disrepute among the vulgar but esteemed by those better able to judge, confined his correspondence to two or three persons--Idomeneus, Polyænus, and Metrodorus. Cicero wrote to hardly more, to Brutus, Atticus, and the other two Ciceros, his brother and son. Seneca wrote to few except his friend Lucilius. It obviously renders felicitous letter-writing a simple matter if we know the character of our correspondent and get used to his particular mind, so that we can judge what he will be glad to hear and what we may properly communicate. But my lot has been a very different one, for heretofore almost my whole life has been passed in journeying from place to place. I might compare my wanderings with those of Ulysses; and certainly were we only on the same plane in reputation and in the fame of our adventures, I might claim that he had not wandered farther or been cast upon more distant shores than I. He was already well advanced in years when he left his native land, and, since nothing is long in our lives, the experiences of his old age were necessarily brief indeed: I, on the other hand, was conceived and born in exile, costing my mother such grievous pangs, and in such critical circumstances, that not only the midwives but the physicians long believed her to be dead. Thus I began to encounter dangers before I was born, and attained the threshold of life under the auspices of death. The event is commemorated by the no means insignificant city of Arezzo,[6] whither my father, driven from his country, had taken refuge, together with many another worthy man. Thence I was taken in my seventh month and carried about all over Tuscany by a certain sturdy youth, who wrapped me up in a cloth, just as Metabus did Camilla, and bore me suspended from a knotty staff, so as not to injure my tender body by any rough contact. But once, in crossing the Arno (I delight to recall with you the beginnings of my tribulations), his horse stumbled and he fell into the water, and while striving to save the burden entrusted to him he nearly sacrificed his own life in the raging flood.

Our wanderings through Tuscany finally ended at Pisa. From here, however, I was dragged away again, in my seventh year,[7] and in our journey to France by sea we were wrecked by winter storms, not far from Marseilles, and I was on the verge of being summoned away anew from the vestibule of life.--But I am straying from my subject. From then until now I have had little or no opportunity to stop and take breath. How many and how various the dangers and apprehensions I have suffered in my migrations no one, after myself, better knows than you. Hence I have felt free to recall these events, that you may keep in mind that I was born among perils and among perils have grown old,--if old I am, and there are not worse trials ahead. Although similar vicissitudes may be common to everyone entering this life, since existence is a warfare--nay more, a battle,--each nevertheless has his peculiar experiences, and the fighting differs greatly in kind. Each has his own burdens to bear, but it still makes a great difference what these burdens are.

Well then, to return to the matter in hand,--since amid the tempests of life I have never for long cast anchor in any one port, I have naturally made innumerable acquaintances. How many true friends I know not, for friends are not only exceedingly few, but difficult to distinguish. It has fallen to my lot, in consequence, to write to a great many who differed so widely from one another in mind and condition that on re-reading my letters it sometimes seemed to me as if I had said in one precisely the opposite from what I had in another. Yet anyone who has been in a similar position will readily admit that I was almost forced into such contradictions. The first care indeed in writing is to consider to whom the letter is to be sent; then we may judge what to say and how to say it. We address a strong man in one way and a weak one in another. The inexperienced youth and the old man who has fulfilled the duties of life, he who is puffed up with prosperity and he who is stricken with adversity, the scholar distinguished in literature and the man incapable of grasping anything beyond commonplace,--each must be treated according to his character or position. There are infinite varieties among men; minds are no more alike than faces. And as the same stomach does not always relish the same kind of food, the same mind is not always to be fed upon the same kind of writing. So the task becomes a double one, for not only have we to consider the person to whom we propose to write, but how those things we are planning to say are likely to affect him when he reads them. Owing to these difficulties I have often been forced into apparent contradictions. And in order that unfavourable critics may not turn this against me, I have relied in a measure upon the kind aid of the flames for safety, and for the rest, upon your keeping the letters secret and suppressing my name.

But friends are lynx-eyed, and nothing is likely to escape them; so that if you cannot keep the letters from the few who still remain, be sure to urge them to destroy immediately any of my communications that they may possess, lest they be disturbed by any changes which I have made in the words or matter. These changes are due to the fact that, since it never occurred to me that you would ask or that I would consent to have the letters brought together in a single collection, I was accustomed, in order to avoid labour, to repeat now and then something I had said in a previous letter, using my own as my own, as Terence says. Now that letters sent off years ago to the most distant regions are brought together at once in a single place, it is easy to perceive deformities in the whole body which were not apparent in the separate parts. Phrases which pleased when they occurred but once in a letter, begin to annoy one when frequently repeated in the same collection; accordingly they must be retained in one and expunged from the others. Many things, too, which related to every-day cares and which deserved mention when I wrote, would now weary even the most eager reader, and were therefore omitted. I recollect that Seneca laughed at Cicero for including trivial matters in his letters, and yet I am much more prone in my epistles to follow Cicero's example than Seneca's. Seneca, indeed, gathered into his letters pretty much all the moral reflections which he had published in his various books: Cicero, on the other hand, treats philosophical subjects in his books, but fills his letters with miscellaneous news and the gossip of the day. Let Seneca think as he likes about this; as for me, I must confess that I find Cicero's letters very agreeable reading. They relax the tension produced by weighty matters, which if long continued strains the mind, though if occasionally interrupted it becomes a source of pleasure.

I cannot sufficiently wonder at the boldness of Sidonius, although I may be a bit rash myself in denouncing this boldness when I do not very well understand his sarcasms, either because of my slow wit or his obscure style, or, as is not impossible, by reason of some error in the text. One thing, however, is clear; Cicero is ridiculed, and by a Sidonius![8] What liberty!--effrontery I would say, did I not fear to exasperate those whom I have already offended by calling him bold. Here is one of the Latin people who finds it in his heart to attack Cicero. Nor does he speak of some single weakness, for if that were all I should have to ask pardon for both Seneca and myself; human frailty, indeed, can hardly escape criticism. But this Sidonius has dared to make sport of Cicero's eloquence,--his whole style and his method in general. This Arvernian[9] orator does not simply imagine himself, as he says, a brother of the Latin orator, which would be audacious enough, but he assumes the rôle of a rival, and, what is worse, of a scoffer. He would deprive him of the renown which all but a few of his contemporaries and fellow-citizens unanimously concede to him: even those few were doubtless warped in their judgment and goaded on by envy, the constant attendant upon contemporary fame. But neither time nor place afford any extenuation in the case of Sidonius. Consequently I wonder more and more what manner of person this was who thus attacked the undoubted prince of orators, although he was himself a disciple of oratory, and belonged to another age, and was born in another land. Upon turning the whole matter over in my mind, I find it impossible to accept in the case of so learned a man the excuse of ignorance, and to ascribe his perverted opinions to a weakness of the head rather than of the heart. I may be mistaken in this matter, as in many others, but if I am I rejoice that I am mistaken in company with many, and those by far the most distinguished, judges in believing that Cicero leaves all fault-finders far behind, and that to him belongs the palm for prose eloquence. From this point of view the moral and intellectual perversity of those who deny him pre-eminence becomes as clear as day.

Sidonius brings forward, it is true, a certain Julius Titianus and certain Frontoniani,[10] of whom I have never heard, as the authorities for his sarcasms. To these, and to all those holding such views, I make one and the same reply, namely, that Seneca was right when he said, "Whatever strength or advantage Roman eloquence may have to oppose to the arrogance of Greece was developed by Cicero." Moreover, Quintilian, among the many glorious things which he says of Cicero, well observes: "He was sent by the special gift of providence, with such extraordinary powers that in him eloquence might manifest all her resources." And after many proofs of this, he continues: "It was therefore but right that his contemporaries should declare with one accord that he reigned supreme in the courts. With succeeding generations it has come to pass that Cicero is no longer regarded as the name of a man, but of eloquence itself. To him, therefore, let us look, placing him before us as our model. When a student comes to admire Cicero greatly, he may know that he is making progress."[11] I hold moreover that, conversely, it is quite true that one to whom Cicero's style is displeasing either knows nothing of the highest eloquence or hates it.

Anxious as I was to hasten on, I could not pass over this calumny altogether. To return again to the letters, you will find many written in a familiar style to friends, including yourself; sometimes referring to matters of public or private interest, sometimes relating to bereavements, which form, alas! an ever recurring theme, or to other matters which circumstances brought into prominence. I have discussed almost nothing else, except as I have spoken of my state of mind, or have imparted some bit of news to my friends. I approve, you see, what Cicero says in his first letter to his brother, that it is the proper aim of a letter to inform the one to whom it is addressed of something of which he was ignorant. These considerations account for the title which I have selected. For, on thinking over the matter, although the simple rubric "epistles" was quite appropriate, I rejected it, both because many older writers had chosen it, and because I myself had applied it to the verses to my friends which I mentioned above,[12] and consequently disliked to resort to it a second time. So I chose a new name, and entitled the volume _Letters of Familiar Intercourse_,[13] letters, that is, in which there is little anxious regard to style, but where homely matters are treated in a homely manner. Sometimes, when it was not inappropriate, there may be a bit of simple narration or a few moral reflections, such as Cicero was accustomed to introduce into his letters.

To say so much about a small matter is justified by the fear of censorious critics, who, instead of producing work of their own to be judged, set themselves up as the judges of others' talents--a most audacious and impudent set, whose only safety lies in holding their tongues. Sitting upon the shore with folded hands, we are safe in expressing any opinions we please upon the art of navigation. By keeping the letters secret you will at least shield these crude productions, that I have carelessly thrown off, from such impudence. If ever I put the last touches to this work, I will send you, not a Phidian Minerva, as Cicero says, but an image, in some sort, of my mind and character, hewn out with great labour. When it reaches you, place it in some safe niche.

So far, so good. The next matter I would gladly say nothing about, but a serious ailment is not easily concealed; its very symptoms betray it. I am ashamed of a life which has lapsed into weakness. As you will see, and as the order of the letters testifies, the language of my earlier years was sober and strong, betokening a valiant heart. I not only stood firm myself, but often consoled others. The succeeding letters become day by day weaker and more dispirited, nor have the lamentations with which they are filled a sufficiently manly tone. It is these that I would ask you to guard with special care. For what would others say to sentiments which I myself cannot re-read without a blush? Was I indeed a man in my youthful days, only to become a child when I reached maturity?

With a disingenuousness which I reprehend and deplore, I conceived the plan of changing the order of the letters, or concealing from you entirely those that I condemn. Neither subterfuge would have deceived you, since you possess the originals of these melancholy missives, and are aware of the year and day upon which each was written. Consequently I must arm myself with excuses. I have grown weary in the long and arduous battle. While courage and valour stood by me, I made a stand myself and encouraged others to resist; but when, by reason of the strength of the enemy and the fierceness of his onset, I began to lose my footing, and my spirits began to droop, that fine, bold tone promptly deserted me, and I descended to those weak laments which are so displeasing. My affection for my friends may perhaps extenuate my offence, for while they remained unharmed I never groaned on account of any wound of fortune. But when almost all of them were hurried away in a single great catastrophe, nay when the whole world seemed about to perish,[14] it would have been inhuman, rather than courageous, to remain unmoved. Before that who ever heard me complain of exile, disease, litigation, elections, or the whirl of public affairs?[15] Who ever heard a tearful regret for my father's house, for lost fortune, diminished fame, squandered money, or absent friends? Cicero, however, shows such a want of manliness in the way he writes of such grievances that his sentiments often offend as much as his style delights me. Add to this his litigious epistles, and the complaints and insults which, with the utmost fickleness, he directs against distinguished men whom he himself has but just been lauding to the skies! On reading these I was so shocked and discomposed that I could not refrain in my irritation from writing to him and pointing out what offended me in his writings, as if he were a friend and contemporary.[16] Ignoring the space of time which separates us, I addressed him with a familiarity springing from my sympathy with his genius. This letter suggested others of the kind. For instance, on re-reading, after some years, Seneca's tragedy of _Octavia_,[17], I felt the same impulse to write to him, and later I wrote, on various themes, to Varro, Virgil, and others.[18] A few of these, which I have inserted in the latter part of this work, might produce the utmost astonishment in the mind of the reader, were he not forewarned. The rest I burned up in that general holocaust of which I told you above.

Just as Cicero was absorbed in his trials, so was I at one time in mine. But to-day--that you may know my present temper--it would not be inappropriate to attribute to me that serenity which comes, as Seneca says, even to the most untried, the serenity of despair itself. Why indeed fear, when one has so many times striven with death itself?

Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem.

You will see me work and speak with growing courage from day to day. If I should hit upon any subject worthy of my pen, the style itself will be more vigorous. Many themes will undoubtedly offer themselves. My writing and my life I foresee will come to an end together.

But while my other works are finished, or bid fair to be, these letters, which I began in an irregular fashion in my early youth, and am now bringing together in my old age and arranging in a volume,--this work the love of my friends will never permit me to finish, since I must conscientiously reply to their messages; nor can I ever persuade them to accept the oft-repeated excuse of my other occupations. When you shall learn that I have at last begged to be freed from that duty, and have brought this work to an end, then you may know that I am dead and freed from all life's burdens. In the meantime I shall continue to follow the path which I have entered upon, not looking for its end until darkness comes upon me. Pleasant work will take the place of repose with me. Moreover, having placed the weakest of my forces in the centre, as orators and generals are wont to do, I shall take care that, as I showed a solid front in beginning my book, so my rear-guard too shall not be wanting in courage. Indeed, I may make better head against the attacks and buffets of fortune, thanks to a gradual process of hardening which has gone on through life. In short, although I dare not assert how I shall demean myself in the stress of circumstances, I am firmly resolved not to succumb to any trial hereafter. "Beneath the crash of worlds undaunted he appears." You may picture me thus armed with the good thoughts of Virgil and Horace, which I used often to read and praise in my earlier years, and which, in my latter days of calamity, stern necessity has forced me to make my own.

My communion with you has been very pleasant, and I have, in my enjoyment, been led half unconsciously to prolong it. It brought back your face over land and sea, and kept you with me until evening. I took up my pen this morning, and the day and this letter are coming to an end together.

Well, this which I dedicate to you, my brother, is a fabric, so to speak, of many coloured threads. But should I ever find a resting-place, and the leisure I have always sought in vain (and there is the promise of such a change), I intend to weave for you a more worthy and certainly more uniform web. I should be glad to think that I am among the few who can promise and confer fame; but you can lift yourself into the light without my aid, borne on the wings of your own genius. However, if I am able to rise, in spite of all the difficulties which beset me, you hereafter shall assuredly be my Idomeneus, my Atticus, and my Lucilius. Farewell.

* * * * *

The selection and copying of the letters, which Petrarch appears to have begun about 1359, when he was fifty-five years old, proved to be a trying task that dragged through five or six years. Writing to Boccaccio, in 1365, he describes a clever youth of Ravenna who had come to him two years before and, among other duties, had assisted him in editing the correspondence.[19] "My prose epistles to my friends,"[20] he says, "are very numerous; would that they were proportionately valuable! What with the confusion of the copies and the pressure of my other occupations I had almost despaired of editing them. Four friends had promised me their aid, but after a trial had left the task half done; yet this young man has, quite by himself, completed the collection, which does not include all indeed, but as many of them as will go into a not too huge volume. Counting this one, they amount to three hundred and fifty,[21] which, if it please God, you shall sometime behold, written in his hand. You will not find the ill-defined though sumptuous penmanship affected by our copyists, or rather painters, of to-day, which delights us at a distance, but, as if invented for any other purpose than to be read, strains and tires the eyes when we look at it intently, thus belying the saying of the prince of grammarians that the word _letter_ comes from _legere_, to read. This youth's characters are, on the contrary, compressed[22] and clear, carrying the eye with them, nor will you discover any faults of orthography or grammatical errors."

It is safe to infer that the additional labour involved in duplicating from the outset all his letters, so that he might retain copies of them, was not undertaken without the expectation of ultimately bringing them together into a collection for publication, like the correspondence of Seneca and that of Abelard, with both of which he was familiar. (Of Cicero's letters he knew little if anything until he himself discovered a copy of part of them at Verona, in 1345, when he was already forty-one years old, too late for them to exercise any decisive influence upon the formation of his epistolary style.[23]) He had, moreover, long before the editing began, promised his friend "Socrates" that these prose epistles should be dedicated to him.[24] There can even be no doubt that individual letters were destined for a more or less wide circle of readers, as is shown by their careful composition and, here and there, by a naive confession, as in the repetition for the benefit of others of the earlier part of the story of the goldsmith, with which the friend to whom he was writing was already familiar.[25] Indeed he closes his collection with an explicit appeal to the "candid reader, whoever thou art," exhorting him by their common love for the same studies not to allow himself to be disturbed by the confusion and unstudied language of the work, but to recall the excuses offered in the Preface.[26]

The entire prose correspondence of Petrarch falls into four divisions. The largest group, the one that he discusses in the Preface given above, embraces three hundred and forty-seven letters, which were written between the years 1332 and 1362.[27] To this collection, which filled the "not too huge volume," he decided to give the unassuming general title of _De Rebus Familiaribus_, by which he meant to imply that every-day topics were therein discussed with his friends, with no especial attention to style. He evidently wished to avoid any possible inference that he supposed that so miscellaneous and heterogeneous a mass of work could possess real literary form and merit. The title may fairly enough, if not literally, be translated _Letters of Friendly Intercourse._

A second and much smaller collection was formed from those which could not be included in the main volume without unduly increasing its bulk.[28] About seventy of these have been re-discovered, and constitute the so-called _Miscellaneous Letters (Epistolæ Variæ)_.

But the editing of this earlier correspondence did not bring the work to a close; the love of his friends admitted no conclusion to the task. "Their messages," he declares, "will still continue to come and I must continue to reply to them." Consequently a new division of the correspondence was formed, the important _Epistolæ de Rebus Senilibus,--Letters of Old Age_,--which were written during the last twelve years of the poet's life. A short dedication to "Simonides" (_i.e._, Francesco Nelli) is prefixed to them.[29] There are one hundred and twenty-four in this group, some of them very long.

Lastly, there is a little group of about twenty letters, some of which contained such frank strictures upon the régime of the popes at Avignon that Petrarch found it expedient to put them by themselves and to suppress the names of those to whom they were addressed. These, the _Epistolæ sine Titulo_,[30] are so acrid in tone, and so unmeasured in the abuse which they heap upon the degraded churchmen, that their author has sometimes mistakenly been reckoned as a forerunner of the Reformation; but, as we shall see, he had no thought of questioning a single dogma of the Catholic Church.

Of the _Letters of Friendly Intercourse_, scarcely half appear in the most complete of the older printed editions,[31] but they have, not long since, been edited in full by Giuseppe Fracassetti, who includes no less than one hundred and twenty-eight never before printed. The _Epistolæ Variæ--Miscellaneous Letters_--are also to be found in his excellent edition.[32] The _Letters of Old Age_ were early printed in their entirety, but unfortunately have not been reproduced since 1581. If one would read them in the original he must still turn to the miserable Basle editions of the works, which would almost appear to have been printed by persons unfamiliar with the rudiments of Latin, so numerous and incredible are the typographical errors which not only try the reader's temper but often entirely obscure the meaning.

How far Petrarch modified the original form of the letters in editing them is an important question, but one upon which we have but little information. He says in the Preface that the unworthy expedient occurred to him of suppressing such letters as exhibited his past weakness, or so changing their order that he should at least appear in a more favourable light. But this, he decided, would be quite useless, since his friends possessed the properly dated originals. On the other hand, he certainly destroyed a large number of his papers. What canons he adopted in his selection we cannot determine, but obviously the temptation to exclude those which might seem to place him in a false position must have been almost irresistible. Moreover, he did not hesitate, as we have seen, in order to avoid repetition and monotony, to so alter the language that he felt it necessary to ask his friends, in some instances, to destroy their original copies lest they should be hurt by the changes he had made.

There seems to be no doubt that the _Letters of Friendly Intercourse_ are arranged in the codices, and published by Fracassetti, in the order in which Petrarch first placed them. His intention was to observe chronological sequence, for he says explicitly that with the exception of the letters to dead authors, which he put together at the end of the volume, almost all the rest remained in the order in which they were written.[33] While this is true in general, there are many obvious exceptions. Unfortunately he did not ordinarily indicate the year, but only the day and the month upon which he wrote. It is very probable, therefore, that in arranging the letters years later he was often unable to determine just where a letter belonged. Fracassetti has devoted a great deal of attention to establishing the dates, where it is possible,[34] and has in this way done much to make the course of the poet's life clearer.

There is but one letter among those which have been preserved to which an earlier date than 1331 can be ascribed. The series begins, therefore, in Petrarch's twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year. Some ninety of the letters were probably written before he was forty, but the great bulk of them belong to his later years. Almost one-half of those included in the various collections were composed after he had reached fifty.

It will naturally be asked if any of the replies called forth by Petrarch during toward half a century of indefatigable letter-writing have come down to us. A few only have been preserved. Recently a little volume containing thirty letters from his Florentine friend Francesco Nelli, has been published.[35] Besides these, there are four letters from Boccaccio,[36] one from Rienzo,[37] one from the Emperor Charles IV.,[38] three from Guglielmo di Pastrengo,[39] five from the enthusiastic young Humanist, Coluccio Salutati,[40] and perhaps a very few others. With these exceptions, Petrarch's correspondence includes only his own letters; and his friends often exist for us only in his kindly allusions to them. This is pre-eminently true of "Socrates" and "Lælius," to whom so many of the letters are addressed.

1: Of "Socrates," as Petrarch chose to call one of his most intimate friends whose real name was Ludovico, we know almost nothing. He was born in the Netherlands but appears to have spent most of his life in Avignon, where he died in 1362. Although he never visited Italy he would seem to have been thoroughly Italian in his tastes.

2: Laura, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, and other friends of Petrarch fell victims to the plague in that year.

3: It was probably Cicero's expressions of admiration in _De Oratore_ which led Petrarch to choose Isocrates as typifying the oratorical style.

4: This reference is obscure.

5: Reading _reipublicæ_ for _rempublicam._

6: Petrarch learned upon visiting Arezzo, as he was returning from the Jubilee in 1350, that the magistrates had ordered that no alterations should be made in the humble house where he was born. See _Sen_., xiii., 3.

7: Petrarch refers this journey to his _ninth_ year in his _Letter to Posterity._

8: Sidonius Apollinaris, a Christian writer of the fifth century, is here the innocent victim of Petrarch's doubtless excusable ignorance. In speaking of his own letters Sidonius says that he has modestly refrained from attempting to imitate Cicero's style, and cites the fate of Titianus, who brought derision upon himself by so doing. Unless, as is quite possible, the text which Petrarch used was corrupt, it is difficult to explain how, even if, as he admits (see below p. 143: Consequently I wonder more ...), he had never heard of Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, he could have so completely missed the point. The offending passage reads: "Nam de Marco Tullio silere me in stylo epistolari melius puto, quem nec Julius Titianus totum ... digna similitudine expressit. Propter quod illum cæteri quique Frontonianorum [_i.e._, admirers of Fronto], utpote consectaneum æmulati, cum veternorum dicendi genus imitaretur, oratorum simiam nuncupaverunt."--Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, vol. lviii., pp. 444-5.

9: Sidonius was born in Lyons; the epithet "arvernus" refers to his bishopric of Clermont, anciently called Arverni.

10: See note above, p. 141 (Phrases which pleased when they occurred...).

11: Quintilian's _Institutes_, bk. x., ch. i., §§ 109-112.

12: _I.e._, the metrical epistles.

13: Familiarum rerum liber. See below, p. 153 _sqq_ (The entire prose correspondence of Petrarch...)

14: A reference to the plague of 1348; see above, pp. 113, 114. (We may infer that he now enjoyed...)

15: This list of woes seems to have been suggested by Cicero's experience rather than his own.

16: See the letters to Cicero, given below, p. 239 _sqq_. (He wrote to the emperor and the pope...)

17: Petrarch elsewhere expresses doubts whether Seneca really wrote this tragedy which, it is now generally believed, is by another hand. See _Fam_., xxiv., 5.

18: See below, Part III., for examples of these letters.

19: _Fam_., xxiii., 19 (vol. iii., pp. 237, 238).

20: Familiares epistolæ.

21: There are but three hundred and forty-seven in the codices used by Fracassetti. See _Let. delle Cos. Fam_., v., p. 110.

22: _Castigata, i.e_., without any flourishes such as disfigure the manuscripts of the period. See the facsimile of Petrarch's own clear handwriting, p. 238. (A PAGE OF PETRARCH'S COPY OF THE "ILIAD.")

23: The other great classical collections of letters, Pliny's, appears to have been unknown to Petrarch. See, further, p. 230 _sq_. (Petrarch's letters afford countless illustrations...)

24: See above, p. 134. (I was more indulgent to these,...)

25: See below, p. 172. (His age seemed to be the only obstacle)

26: _Fam_., xxiv., 13 (vol. iii., p. 307).

27: One earlier letter (1326), and a half dozen written later, have found their way into this group.

28: _Fam_., xxiv., 13 (vol, iii., p. 306).

29: _Sen_., i., 1, and iii., 1.

30: In the Basle editions of the works, and in the editions of the letters published in 1601, some letters are included among the _Epistolæ sine Titulo_ which apparently do not belong there.

31: Not more than one-third are to be found in the Basle editions of 1554 and 1581.

32: _Francisci Petrarcæ Epistolæ de Rebus Familiaribus et Variæ_, studio et cura Josephi Fracassetti, Tom. iii., 8°, Florentiæ, 1859-63.

33: _Fam_., xxiv., 13 (vol, iii., p. 306).

34: In the notes to his Italian version of the letters.

35: _Lettres de Francesco Nelli à Pétrarque_, publiées par Henry Cochin, Paris, 1892.

36: In _Le Lettere di Boccaccio_, edited by Corazzini, Florence, 1877.

37: In the _Epistolario di Cola di Rienzo_, edited by Gabrielli, Rome, 1890.

38: In Mehus's _Vita Ambrosii_, p. 191. Translated into Italian by Fracassetti, _Let. delle Cos. Fam_., iv., 85 _sq_.

39: These were formerly attributed to Petrarch, and are printed in the Venetian edition of his letters (1503). See Fracassetti, _Let. delle Cos. Fam_., ii., 439 _sqq_.

40: In the _Epistolarium de Coluccio Salutati_, edited by Novati, vol. i.

II

PETRARCH AND HIS LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES

Quotidie epistolas, quotidie carmina omnis in caput hoc nostri orbis angulus pluit;... jam nec Gallis modo, sed Graiis et Teutonis et Britannis tempestatibus litterarum pulsor, omnium ingeniorum arbiter, mei ipsius ignarus.--_Fam_., xiii., 7.

The following letters have been selected with a view to illustrating Petrarch's attitude toward the Italian language and literature, his estimate of the other writers of his time, especially Dante and Boccaccio, and, in general, his literary ideals, and habits of work. An effort has been made to secure some continuity by the arrangement of the matter and the accompanying explanations, but any strictly logical presentation is precluded by the miscellaneous contents of the letters themselves. The reader is left, in most cases, to make his own deductions from Petrarch's words, but a brief excursus is added here and there, with the hope of emphasising some of the more important points.

The first two letters would indicate that there was a wide-spread interest in literature during the fourteenth century, and that Petrarch was looked upon as the highest tribunal before which the aspirant could lay his work. Few of his letters are more instructive or are written in a lighter and more felicitous tone than the one which follows.

_Petrarch's Passion for Work--The Trials of a Man of Letters_

_To the Abbot of St. Benigno_[1]

Strangely enough I long to write, but do not know what or to whom. This inexorable passion has such a hold upon me that pen, ink, and paper, and work prolonged far into the night, are more to my liking than repose and sleep. In short, I find myself always in a sad and languishing state when I am not writing, and, anomalous though it seems, I labour when I rest, and find my rest in labour. My mind is hard as rock, and you might well think that it really sprang from one of Deucalion's stones. Let this tireless spirit pore eagerly over the parchment, until it has exhausted both fingers and eyes by the long strain, yet it feels neither heat nor cold, but would seem to be reclining upon the softest down. It is only fearful that it may be dragged away, and holds fast the mutinous members. Only when sheer necessity has compelled it to quit does it begin to flag. It takes a recess as a lazy ass takes his pack when he is ordered up a sharp hill, and comes back again to its task as a tired ass to his well-filled manger. My mind finds itself refreshed by prolonged exercise, as the beast of burden by his food and rest. What then am I to do, since I cannot stop writing, or bear even the thought of rest? I write to you, not because what I have to say touches you nearly, but because there is no one so accessible just now who is at the same time so eager for news, especially about me, and so intelligently interested in strange and mysterious phenomena, and ready to investigate them.

I have just told you something of my condition and of my indefatigable brain, but I will tell you now an incident which may surprise you even more, and will at the same time prove the truth of what I have said. It happened at a time when, after a long period of neglect, I had just taken up my _Africa_ again, and that with an ardour like that of the African sun itself. This is the task which, if anything will help me, I trust may some time moderate or assuage my insatiable thirst for work. One of my very dearest friends, seeing that I was almost done for with my immoderate toil, suddenly asked me to grant him a very simple favour. Although I was unaware of the nature of his request, I could not refuse one who I knew would ask nothing except in the friendliest spirit. He thereupon demanded the key of my cabinet. I gave it to him, wondering what he would do, when he proceeded to gather together and lock up carefully all my books and writing materials. Then, turning away, he prescribed ten days of rest, and ordered me, in view of my promise, neither to read nor write during that time. I saw his trick; to him I now seemed to be resting, although in reality I felt as if I were bound hand and foot. That day passed wearily, seeming as long as a year. The next day I had a headache from morning till night. The third day dawned and I began to feel the first signs of fever, when my friend returned, and seeing my plight gave me back the keys. I quickly recovered, and perceiving that I lived on work, as he expressed it, he never repeated his request.

Is it then true that this disease of writing, like other malignant disorders, is, as the Satirist claims, incurable, and, as I begin to fear, contagious as well? How many, do you reckon, have caught it from me? Within our memory, it was rare enough for people to write verses.[2] But now there is no one who does not write them; few indeed write anything else. Some think that the fault, so far as our contemporaries are concerned, is largely mine. I have heard this from many, but I solemnly declare, as I hope some time to be granted immunity from the other ills of the soul--for I look for none from this--that I am now at last suddenly awakened for the first time by warning signs to a consciousness that this may perhaps be true; while intent only upon my own welfare, I may have been unwittingly injuring, at the same time, myself and others. I fear that the reproaches of an aged father, who unexpectedly came to me, with a long face and almost in tears, may not be without foundation. "While I," he said, "have always honoured your name, see the return you make in compassing the ruin of my only son!" I stood for a time in embarrassed silence, for the age of the man and the expression of his face, which told of great sorrow, went to my heart. Then, recovering myself, I replied, as was quite true, that I was unacquainted either with him or his son. "What matters it," the old man answered, "whether you know him or not? He certainly knows you. I have spent a great deal in providing instruction for him in the civil law, but he declares that he wishes to follow in your footsteps. My fondest hopes have been disappointed, and I presume that he will never be either a lawyer or a poet." At this neither I nor the others present could refrain from laughter, and he went off none the better humoured. But now I recognise that this merriment was ill-timed, and that the poor old man deserved our consolation, for his complaints and his reproaches were not ungrounded. Our sons formerly employed themselves in preparing such papers as might be useful to themselves or their friends, relating to family affairs, business, or the wordy din of the courts. Now we are all engaged in the same occupation, and it is literally true, as Horace says, "learned or unlearned, we are all writing verses alike."

It is after all but a poor consolation to have companions in misery. I should prefer to be ill by myself. Now I am involved in others' ill-fortune as well as in my own, and am hardly given time to take breath. For every day letters and poems from every corner of our land come showering down upon my devoted head. Nor does this satisfy my foreign friends. I am overwhelmed by floods of missives, no longer from France alone, but from Greece, from Germany, from England. I am unable to judge even my own work, and yet I am called upon to be the universal critic of others! Were I to answer the requests in detail, I should be the busiest of mortals. If I condemn the composition, I am a jealous carper at the good work of others; if I say a good word for the thing, it is attributed to a mendacious desire to be agreeable; if I keep silence altogether, it is because I am a rude, pert fellow. They are afraid, I infer, that my disease will not make way with me promptly enough. Between their goading and my own madness I shall doubtless gratify their wishes.

But all this would be nothing if, incredible as it may seem, this subtle poison had not just now begun to show its effects in the Roman Curia itself. What do you think the lawyers and doctors are up to? Justinian and Æsculapius have palled upon them. The sick and the litigious cry in vain for their help, for they are deafened by the thunder of Homer's and Virgil's names, and wander oblivious in the woody valleys of Cirrha, by the purling waters of the Aonian fountain. But it is hardly necessary to speak of these lesser prodigies. Even carpenters, fullers, and ploughmen leave the implements of their calling to talk of Apollo and the Muses. I cannot say how far the plague, which lately was confined to a few, has now spread.

If you would find an explanation for all this, you must recollect that although the delights of poetry are most exquisite, they can be fully understood only by the rarest geniuses, who are careless of wealth and possess a marked contempt for the things of this world, and who are by nature especially endowed with a peculiar elevation and freedom of soul.[3] Consequently, as experience and the authority of the most learned writers agree, in no branch of art can mere industry and application accomplish so little. Hence--and you may find it comical although it disgusts me--all the poets are nowadays to be found on the street corner, and we can descry scarcely one on Helicon itself. They are all nibbling at the Pierian honeycomb, but no one can manage to digest it. How delightful indeed must this gift be to those who really possess it, when it can exercise such a fascination over sluggish minds, and in our vain and degenerate age can induce even the most avaricious to leave the pursuit of gain! On one thing, at least, our country may be congratulated: in spite of all the tares and sterile stalks which cumber the earth, some signs of true youthful genius are to be discovered. Some, if I am not misled by my hopes, will not drink in vain of the Castalian spring.--I felicitate thee, Mantua, beloved of the Muses, thee, Padua, thee, Verona, thee, Cimbria,[4] thee, Sulmo, and thee, Parthenope, home of Maro, when I see elsewhere the thirsty herd of upstart poetasters wandering drearily among uncertain byways!

It pricks my conscience that I should be responsible in great part for fostering all these forms of literary madness, and should have misled others through my example,--by no means the least of offences. I fear lest those laurel leaves, which in my eagerness I tore prematurely from the branch, may in a way be answerable for the trouble. While, as many believe, they have been the means of bringing true dreams to me, they have caused in others a multitude of delusive visions, which were allowed to escape while all the world was asleep, through the ivory gates, into the autumnal air. But never mind, I suffer for my sins, for I am in a rage if I stay at home, and yet hardly dare nowadays to venture into the street. If I do, wild fellows rush up from every side and seize upon me, asking advice, giving me suggestions, disputing and fighting among themselves. They discover meanings in the poets of which the Mantuan shepherd, or the old blind man of Mœonia never dreamed. I become more and more irritated, and at last begin to fear that I may be dragged off before a magistrate for breaking the peace.

But how I am running on! I have spun a whole letter out of mere trifles....[5] I have just arrived here,[6] and will await you as long as I possibly can. I know not whether it be that the air here renders the mind less susceptible to foreign impressions, or whether this "closed valley" does, as its name indicates, shut out alien preoccupations, but certain it is that, although I have from my earliest manhood spent many years here, none of the inhabitants have yet become poets through contagious contact with me, with the sole exception of one of my farm-hands. Although advanced in years he, as Persius hath it, is beginning to dream on the two-peaked Parnassus. If the disease spreads I am undone. Shepherds, fishermen, hunters, ploughboys,--all would be carried away, even the cows would low in numbers and ruminate sonnets. Do not forget me. Farewell.

FOUNTAIN OF THE SORGUE.

_The Visit to the Goldsmith at Bergamo_

_To Neri Morando_[7]

Enough has been said of my own trifling experiences, and the story of the wound inflicted upon me by Cicero has reached an unconscionable length.[8] But I will add another incident to prove that Cicero is not the only one who enjoyed the affection of those who had never seen him. Although an old story to you, it may nevertheless arouse new interest when you hear it again.

From here I have always in sight a certain Alpine town, the Italian Pergamum,[9] to distinguish it from an Asiatic city of the same name, which, as you know, was once the capital of Attalus, who bequeathed his possessions to Rome. In our Pergamum there lives a certain man, who, while he has but a slight knowledge of literature, possesses a good mind,--had he earlier applied himself to study. By profession he is a goldsmith, remarkably successful in the practice of his art; he enjoys moreover the best gift that nature can bestow, for he is an admirer and lover of all that is good and beautiful. The gold in which he works, and other forms of worldly wealth, appeal to him only in so far as they are means to higher ends. This old man, having heard of me by reputation, was immediately seized with a most ardent desire to win my friendship.

It would be a long story were I to recount all the devices he used in order to gratify this modest wish. By constant, courteous attentions and compliments to me and to those about me, he at last succeeded in his ardent efforts to bridge the chasm between us. While I had never seen him before, I knew his name and object, indeed his longing was plainly depicted in his face and expression. No one surely would have been so rude and surly as to refuse to see him under the circumstances. How could I have done otherwise? I was completely vanquished by the man's attractive countenance and his sincere and persistent attentions, and received him with hearty and unreserved good-will; indeed, it would have been inhuman to have rejected such proofs of genuine affection. His exultation and pride were at once obvious in every accent and gesture. He seemed to have reached the very summit of his fondest hopes and to be metamorphosed by his joy.

He began long ago to spend no small part of his patrimony in my honour. In every corner of his house he placed the arms, name, and portrait of his new friend, whose face was even more deeply graven in his heart. Another portion of his wealth he devoted to procuring copies of anything of mine which he could get hold of, no matter what might be its character. I could not be very hard-hearted when it came to letting so enthusiastic and novel a collector have what I certainly would have denied a man of more consequence. He moreover gradually weaned himself from his previous life, habits, and interests, and so completely altered his whole former self as to be a source of utter astonishment to his friends.

In one matter, however, he refused to be guided by me, and, in spite of my opposition and frequent admonitions that he should not, at so late a day, exchange his customary vocations for a life of study, he finally left his shop and began to frequent the schools and cultivate teachers of the liberal arts. He took the greatest delight in his new life and was extremely sanguine as to the results. I cannot say how he actually got along, but he certainly merited the highest degree of success in his fond undertaking. No one could have shown greater ardour in a good cause, or more contempt for the less worthy objects of desire. He was at least equipped with a good mind and great enthusiasm, and could find plenty of teachers in his city. His age seemed to be the only obstacle, although I well know that Plato took up the study of philosophy late in life, and Cato made no little progress in Greek literature when he was already an old man. Perhaps it is but right that this man should for this very reason find a niche in some of my works. So I will add that he is called Henry, his surname being Capra,[10] a most energetic and lively animal, fond of leaves and always climbing upwards. For these reasons Varro believes that the name is, by a transposition of letters, derived from this animal's tendency to _nibble_ twigs, and certainly _carpa_ and _capra_ are not very unlike. If anyone ever deserved the name it is our friend, who, if he had got at the woods in the morning would have returned with a full paunch and plenty of milk. All this you yourself have heard often enough, but I tell it for the benefit of others.[11] The rest of my story you do not yet know.

This fellow, whose character and devotion to me I have so carefully portrayed, had long been urging me to honour him and his lares with a visit, and by a sojourn of at least a single day to render him, as he put it, happy and renowned to all future generations. I continued, however, not without difficulty, to postpone his desire for several years. But at last, influenced by the nearness of the place, and overcome not only by prayers but by objurations and tears, I consented to accompany him, in spite of the objections of my more haughty friends, to whom he seemed unworthy of the honour.

I reached Bergamo on the evening of October thirteenth. My host had accompanied me the whole of the way, and, in constant fear lest I might perhaps change my mind, he and those with him exerted all their powers of invention to discover topics of conversation which might make the way less wearisome. Thus we traversed a short and easy road without fatigue. A few gentlemen had accompanied me with the special purpose of finding out what this enthusiastic person might have in store.

Well, when we approached the town I was cordially received by friends who had come out to meet me. They, with the Podestà, the Captain of the People, and other local magistrates, vied with each other in urging me to put up at the palazzo or at some gentleman's house. All this time my poor goldsmith was trembling for fear I might give in to such insistence. But I did what I believed to be proper under the circumstances, and alighted with my companions at the house of my more humble friend. There I was received with great pomp, and sat down to a kingly banquet rather than to the good cheer of an artisan or philosopher. My couch of purple was spread in a room glittering with gold, where, as my host swore by all that was holy, no one else had ever slept or ever would sleep. The books I found were not technical, but such as would be dear to a student and a lover of good literature. Here I passed the night. Certainly no one ever enjoyed the hospitality of so delighted a host. In fact his delight was so great that his friends began to fear for his sanity, or lest, as has happened to not a few, he should actually die of joy.

The next day I departed, loaded with honours and surrounded by a great crowd. The Podestà and many others whose society I did not care for accompanied me much farther on my way than was agreeable. It was late before I had finally shaken off my fervid host and was again at my country place.

You have now heard, good Neri, what I had in mind to tell you, and this nocturnal epistle must come to an end,--for my anxiety to get my letter done has kept me writing straight on until nearly dawn. I am weary now and the morning quiet invites me to enjoy the best part of the night for slumber. Farewell, remember your friend.

Written with a rural pen, just before light, on October 15.

* * * * *

The three following letters furnish a very clear expression of Petrarch's feelings towards the Italian language and his great collaborators in its formation, Dante and Boccaccio.

Grieved by a certain indifference which his friend exhibited towards Dante, Boccaccio, soon after his return from a visit to Petrarch, sent him a copy of the _Divine Comedy_.[12] Accompanying the volume was a Latin poem, in which he requested that Petrarch read the work of his distinguished fellow-citizen and place it among his other books.[13]

The letter that Petrarch wrote in acknowledgment of the gift is one of the most important in his correspondence. Strangely enough, there are but two in all the vast collection of prose letters in which he makes any allusions to Dante, and then never by name. In one of his lesser works he narrates one or two anecdotes of Dante's brusqueness towards the despots whose hospitality he enjoyed.[14] It is nevertheless probably unfair to accuse Petrarch of jealousy. In the first place, the assumption that he had never read the _Divine Comedy_ is hardly justifiable. It is true that he did not possess a copy of the work, and that Boccaccio urged him to read and cherish it. But he must assuredly have been acquainted with the writings of an author whom he declared to be without question the greatest master of the vernacular. The reader can, however, reach his own conclusions, as all the data which we have are given below. He should remember that Petrarch was placed in a trying position. It is impossible to appear wholly unconstrained and natural when one is meeting the charge of jealousy towards a popular contemporary. Then, a scholar or an author may not be completely or enthusiastically in sympathy with some of his fellow-workers to whom he would nevertheless accord a very high rank. We may safely infer that Petrarch was not drawn towards Dante, although he frankly acknowledged his greatness. The two men had much in common, their Christian humanism for example,[15] but Dante's devotion to mediæval theology and science must have repelled the younger poet, whose studies were exclusively literary, including perhaps moral philosophy and history, but utterly foreign to the lucubrations of Peter Lombard or Thomas Aquinas. An able Italian critic[16] has suggested that we may find an analogy between Petrarch's attitude toward Dante, and that of Erasmus toward Luther, or Voltaire's toward Rousseau. Once, when but eight years old, he had seen the dark, emaciated poet of the Ghibellines. The harsh manner and the haughty profile of the man may, as Carducci says, have impressed the rosy youngster with fear and created a feeling of dislike which he did not entirely outgrow.

The second letter to Boccaccio upon the Italian poets was written some five years after the one of which we have been speaking, and a difference in the tone of the references to Dante is perhaps perceptible. The _Trionfi_, the latest of Petrarch's Italian poems, somewhat resemble in style the _Divine Comedy_, and were perhaps written partly with the aim of showing that he could rise to the same high strain.

Petrarch entertained much less regard for the vulgar tongue than Dante and Boccaccio, because more completely engrossed by the strength of the Latin. To him "prose and verse," as we shall see, meant compositions in Latin, which was alone adapted to the highest purposes of expression. From his scornful treatment of the Italian language the reader will naturally turn to the first book of Dante's _Convito_,[17] or to his little treatise, _The Vernacular_ (_De Vulgari Eloquio_), where the advantages and weaknesses of the mother tongue are sympathetically discussed.

_Petrarch Disclaims all Jealousy of Dante_

_To Boccaccio_[18]

There are many things in your letter which do not require any answer; those, for example, which we have lately settled face to face. Two points there were, however, which it seemed to me should not be passed over in silence, and I will briefly write down such reflections concerning them as may occur to me. In the first place, you excuse yourself with some heat for seeming to praise unduly a certain poet, a fellow-citizen of ours, who in point of style is very popular, and who has certainly chosen a noble theme. You beg my pardon for this, as if I regarded anything said in his, or anyone else's praise, as detracting from my own. You assert, for instance, that if I will only look closely at what you say of him, I shall find that it all reflects glory upon me. You take pains to explain, in extenuation of your favourable attitude towards him, that he was your first light and guide in your early studies. Your praise is certainly only a just and dutiful acknowledgment of his services, an expression of what I may call filial piety. If we owe all to those who begot and brought us forth, and much to those who are the authors of our fortunes, what shall we say of our debt to the parents and fashioners of our minds? How much more, indeed, is due to those who refine the mind than to those who tend the body, he will perceive who assigns to each its just value; for the one, it will be seen, is an immortal gift, the other, corruptible and destined to pass away.

Continue, then, not by my sufferance simply, but with my approbation, to extol and cherish this poet, the guiding star of your intellect, who has afforded you courage and light in the arduous way by which you are pressing stoutly on towards a most glorious goal. He has long been buffeted and wearied by the windy plaudits of the multitude. Honour him now and exalt him by sincere praise worthy alike of you and of him, and, you may be sure, not unpleasing to me. He is worthy of such a herald, while you, as you say, are the natural one to assume the office. I therefore accept your song of praise with all my heart, and join with you in extolling the poet you celebrate therein.[19]

Hence there was nothing in your letter of explanation to disturb me except the discovery that I am still so ill understood by you who, as I firmly believed, knew me thoroughly. You think, then, that I do not take pleasure in the praises of illustrious men and glory in them? Believe me, nothing is more foreign to me than jealousy; there is no scourge of which I know less. On the contrary, in order that you may see how far I am from such feelings, I call upon Him before whom all hearts are open to witness that few things in life have caused me more pain than to see the meritorious passed by, utterly without recognition or reward. Not that I am deploring my own lot, or looking for personal gain; I am mourning the common fate of mankind, as I behold the reward of the nobler arts falling to the meaner. I am not unaware that although the reputation which attaches to right conduct may stimulate the mind to deserve it, true virtue is, as the philosophers say, a stimulus to itself; it is its own reward, its own guide, its own end and aim. Nevertheless, now that you have yourself suggested a theme which I should not voluntarily have chosen, I shall proceed to refute for you, and through you for others, the commonly accepted notion of my judgment of this poet. It is not only false, as Quintilian says of the construction put upon his criticism of Seneca,[20] but it is insidious and, with many, out-and-out malevolent. My enemies say that I hate and despise him, and in this way stir up the common herd against me, for with them he is extremely popular. This is indeed a novel kind of perversity, and shows a marvellous aptitude for harming others. But truth herself shall defend me.

In the first place, there can be no possible cause for ill-will towards a man whom I never saw but once, and that in my very earliest childhood. He lived with my grandfather and my father,[21] being younger than the former, but older than my father, with whom, on the same day and by the same civil commotion, he was driven from his country into exile. At such a time strong friendships are often formed between companions in misery. This proved especially true of these two men, since in their case not only a similar fate but a community of taste and a love for the same studies, served to bring them together. My father, however, forced by other cares and by regard for his family, succumbed to the natural influences of exile, while his friend resisted, throwing himself, indeed, with even greater ardour into what he had undertaken, neglecting everything else and desirous alone of future fame. In this I can scarce admire and praise him enough,--that neither the injustice of his fellow-citizens, nor exile, nor poverty, nor the attacks of his enemies, neither the love of wife, nor solicitude for his children, could divert him from the path he had once decided upon, when so many who are highly endowed are yet so weak of purpose that they are swerved from their course by the least disturbance. And this most often happens to writers of verse, for silence and quiet are especially requisite for those who have to care not only for the thought and the words but the felicitous turn as well. Thus you will see that my supposed hate for this poet, which has been trumped up by I know not whom, is an odious and ridiculous invention, since there is absolutely no reason for such repugnance, but, on the contrary, every reason for partiality, on account of our common country, his friendship with my father, his genius, and his style, the best of its kind, which must always raise him far above contempt.

This brings us to the second reproach cast upon me, which is based upon the fact that, although in my early years I was very eager in my search for books of all kinds, I never possessed a copy of this poet's work, which would naturally have attracted me most at that age. While exceedingly anxious to obtain other books which I had little hope of finding, I showed a strange indifference, quite foreign to me, towards this one, although it was readily procurable. The fact I admit, but I deny the motives which are urged by my enemies. At that time I too was devoting my powers to compositions in the vernacular; I was convinced that nothing could be finer, and had not yet learned to look higher. I feared, however, in view of the impressionableness of youth and its readiness to admire everything, that, if I should imbue myself with his or any other writer's verses, I might perhaps unconsciously and against my will come to be an imitator. In the ardour of youth this thought filled me with aversion. Such was my self-confidence and enthusiasm that I deemed my own powers quite sufficient, without any mortal aid, to produce an original style all my own, in the species of production upon which I was engaged. It is for others to judge whether I was right in this. But I must add that if anything should be discovered in my Italian writings resembling, or even identical with, what has been said by him or others, it cannot be attributed to secret or conscious imitation. This rock I have always endeavoured to avoid, especially in my writings in the vernacular, although it is possible that, either by accident or, as Cicero says, owing to similar ways of thinking, I may ignorantly have traversed the same path as others.[22] If you ever believe me, believe me now; accept this as the real explanation of my conduct. Nothing can be more strictly true; and if my modesty and sense of propriety did not seem to you sufficient to vouch for this, my youthful pride at any rate certainly might have explained it.

To-day, however, I have left these anxieties far behind, and, having done so, I am freed from my former apprehension, and can now unreservedly admire other writers, him above all. At that time I was submitting work of my own to the verdict of others, whereas now I am merely passing my own silent verdicts upon my fellows. I find that my opinion varies as regards all the rest, but in his case there can be no room for doubt; without hesitation I yield him the palm for skill in the use of the vulgar tongue. They lie, then, who assert that I carp at his renown; I, who probably understand better than the majority of these foolish and immoderate admirers of his what it is that merely tickles their ears, without their knowing why, but cannot penetrate their thick heads, because the avenues of intelligence are obstructed. They belong to the same class that Cicero brands in his _Rhetoric_, who "read fine orations or beautiful poems, and praise the orators or poets, and yet do not know what it is that has aroused their admiration, for they lack the ability to see where the thing is that most pleases them, or what it is, or how it is produced." If this happens with Demosthenes and Cicero, Homer and Virgil, among learned men and in the schools, how will it fare with our poet among the rude fellows who frequent the taverns and public squares?

As for me, far from scorning his work, I admire and love him, and in justice to myself I may venture to add that if he had been permitted to live until this time he would have found few friends more devoted to him than myself, provided, of course, that I had found his character as attractive as his genius. On the other hand, there are none to whom he would have been more obnoxious than these same silly admirers, who, in general, know equally little about what they praise and what they condemn, and who so mispronounce and lacerate his verses that they do him the greatest injury that a poet can suffer. I might even strive to the best of my powers to rescue him from this abuse, did not my own productions give me enough to think about. As it is, I can only give voice to my irritation, when I hear the common herd befouling with their stupid mouths the noble beauty of his lines.

Just here it may not be out of place to say that this was not the least of the considerations which led me to give up a style of composition to which I devoted myself in my early years. I feared for my writings the same fate which I had seen overtake those of others, especially those of the poet of whom we are speaking. I could not in my own case look for more musical tongues or more flexible minds among the common people than I noted in the rendering of those authors whom long favour and habit have made popular in the theatres and public squares. That my apprehensions were not idle is clear from the fact that I am continually tortured by the tongues of the people, as they sing the few productions which I allowed to escape me in my youth. I indignantly reject and hate what I once loved; and day by day walk the streets with vexation and execrate my own talents. Everywhere a crowd of ignorant fellows, everywhere I find my Damœtas ready at the street corner "to murder with his screeching reed" my poor song.

However, I have already said more than enough concerning a trifling matter which I ought not to have taken so seriously, for this hour, which will never return, should have been devoted to other things. And yet your excuse did seem to me to have just a little in common with the accusations of these critics, some of whom are constantly asserting that I hate, some that I despise, this person,--whose name I have intentionally refrained to-day from mentioning, lest the mob, who catch up everything without understanding it, should cry out that I was defaming it. Others again claim that I am actuated by envy;--men who are jealous of me and my fame; for, although I scarcely am an object for envy, I yet have noticed late in life that there are those who entertain this feeling towards me, a thing that at one time I could not have believed possible. In answer to this charge of envy brought against me, I might reply that, many years ago, in the ardour of youth, and with an approving conscience, I ventured to assert, not in any ordinary manner, but in a poem addressed to a certain illustrious personage, that I envied no man.[23] Suppose, though, that I am not worthy of belief. Still, even then, what probability is there that I should be jealous of a writer who devoted his whole life to those things which with me were but the flower and first-fruits of my youth. What to him was, if not his only occupation, certainly the supreme object of his life, to me was mere sport, a pastime, the first essay of my powers.[24]

What occasion is there here for rancour? What ground is there for even a suspicion of jealousy? When you say, in praising him, that he might have devoted himself to another kind of composition, had he wished, I heartily agree with you. I have the highest opinion of his ability, for it is obvious from what he has done that he would have succeeded in anything he might have chosen to undertake. But suppose that he had turned his powers in another direction, and successfully--what then? What would there be in that to make me jealous? Why should it not rather be a source of satisfaction to me? Who indeed could excite envy in me, who do not envy even Virgil?--unless perhaps I should be jealous of the hoarse applause which our poet enjoys from the tavern-keepers, fullers, butchers, and others of that class, who dishonour those whom they would praise. But, far from desiring such popular recognition, I congratulate myself, on the contrary, that, along with Virgil and Homer, I am free from it, inasmuch as I fully realise how little the plaudits of the unschooled multitude weigh with scholars. Should it be suggested that the citizen of Mantua is, when all is said, dearer to me than my fellow-citizen of Florence, I must urge that, although I will not deny that jealousy does flourish most rankly between neighbours, the mere fact of common origin cannot by itself justify such an inference. Indeed the simple fact of our belonging to different generations would make this latter supposition absurd, for as one has elegantly said, who never speaks otherwise than elegantly, "The dead are neither hated nor envied."

You will accept my solemn affirmation that I delight in both the thought and style of our poet, nor do I ever refer to him except with the greatest admiration. It is true that I have sometimes said to those who wished to know precisely what I thought, that his style was unequal, for he rises to a higher plane of excellence in the vernacular than in poetry and prose.[25] But you will not deny this, nor will it, if rightly understood, carry with it any disparagement of his fame and glory. Who, indeed--I will not say at the present time, when eloquence has so long been mourned as dead, but at the time when it flourished most--who, I say, ever excelled in all its various branches? Witness Seneca's _Declamations!_[26] No one dreams of attributing inexhaustible versatility even to Cicero, Virgil, Sallust, or Plato. Who would lay claim to a degree of praise which must be denied even to such genius? It is enough to have excelled in one kind of composition. This being true, let those be silent who attempt to twist my words into calumnies, and let those who have believed my calumniators read here, if they will, my opinion of them.

Having disposed thus of one matter which has been troubling me, I come now to a second. You thank me for my solicitude for your health. While you do this from courtesy, and in accordance with conventional usage, you well know that such acknowledgment is quite unnecessary. For who is ever thanked for his interest in himself, or his own affairs? and you, dear friend, are part and parcel of myself.

Although, next to virtue, friendship is the most sacred, the most God-like and divine thing in human intercourse, yet I think that it makes a difference whether one begins by loving or by being loved, and that those friendships should be more carefully fostered where we return love for love than where we simply receive it. I have been overwhelmed in a thousand instances by your kindness and friendly offices, but among them all there is one that I can never forget.

In days gone by, I was hurrying across central Italy in mid-winter; you hastened to greet me, not only with affectionate longings, which are the wings of the soul, but in person, impelled by a wondrous desire to behold one whom you had never yet seen,[27] but whom you were nevertheless resolved to love. You had sent before you a piece of beautiful verse, thus showing me first the aspect of your genius, and then of your person. It was evening, and the light was fading, when, returning from my long exile,[28] I found myself at last within my native walls. You welcomed me with a courtesy and respect greater than I merited, recalling the poetic meeting of Anchises and the King of Arcadia, who, "in the ardour of youth, longed to speak with the hero and to press his hand."[29] Although I did not, like him, stand "above all others," but rather beneath, your zeal was none the less ardent. You introduced me, not within the walls of Pheneus, but into the sacred penetralia of your friendship. Nor did I present you with "a superb quiver and arrows of Lycia," but rather with my sincere and unchangeable affection. While acknowledging my inferiority in many respects, I will never willingly concede it in this, either to Nisus, or to Pythias, or to Lælius. Farewell.

1: _Fam_., xiii., 7. This is the only letter that is preserved of Petrarch to this person.

2: _Hæc_, here used, we may safely infer, means verses.

3: _I.e._, a soul able to free itself from the influence of the mere word and perceive the hidden allegorical meaning which to Petrarch was the essence of real poetry. See below, p. 233 _sqq_. (Such remarks, which are not infrequent,...)

4: This name is perhaps incorrect, owing to some error in the MSS. upon which Fracassetti based his edition.

5: About a page is omitted here relating to some lucrative or honourable appointment which Petrarch's friends were anxious to obtain for him.

6: _I.e._ at Vaucluse.

7: _Fam_., xxi., 11. The events here narrated probably occurred in 1359.

8: Petrarch had just finished one letter to Morando, in which he had told him of a wound received on the heel from a great copy of Cicero's works, which had fallen down and struck him.

9: Bergamo.

10: Namely, she-goat.

11: ... sed noscenda aliis dicta sint. Petrarch always wished his letters to be complete even at the risk of repetition. We have here a frank confession that he was not writing for the benefit of the friend alone to whom the letter was addressed. Fracassetti has perversely translated this passage, _odi adesso quel che ancora non sai._

12: A MS. of the _Divine Comedy_ in the Vatican has, it would appear, been at last satisfactorily proven to be the very one which Boccaccio sent. See Pakscher's scholarly paper in _Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie_, vol. x., p. 226 _sqq_. De Nolhac has reached the same conclusion; _cf. La Bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini_, p. 304.

13: The little poem closes with the lines:

"Hunc oro, mi care nimis spesque unica nostrûm, . . . . . . . . Concivem doctumque satis pariterque poetam Suscipe, junge tuis, lauda, cole, perlege. Nam si Feceris hoc, magnis, et te decorabis et illum Laudibus, O nostræ eximium decus urbis et orbis."

Corazzini, _Le Lettere di Boccaccio_, p. 54. Also in Fracassetti's _Let. delle Cos. Fam_., iv., pp. 399, 400.

14: "Rerum Memorandum," _Opera_, p. 427. The misprints in the Basle editions give the anecdotes an ill-natured turn which Petrarch did not intend. The opening of the passage should read: _Dante Algherius et ipse concivus nuper meus, vir vulgari eloquio clarissimus fuit sed moribus parumper contumacior_ [the Basle editions have _parum per contumaciam_] _et oratione liberior quam delicatis et fastidiosis ætatis nostræ principum auribus atque oculis acceptum fuit,_ etc. See Hortis, _Studi sulle Opere Latine del Boccaccio_, Trieste, 1879, p. 303.

15: See the close of the fourth canto of the "Inferno," and especially the _Convito_, iv., ch. 4.

16: Carducci, _Studi Letterari_, 2d ed., p. 334.

17: The best edition is that of Dr. Moore (Clarendon Press, Oxford).

18: _Fam_., xxi., 15 (probably written in 1359).

19: This refers to the poem, spoken of above, with which Boccaccio accompanied his copy of Dante.

20: Quintilian's strictures on Seneca's style had given rise to the opinion that he not only disapproved of Seneca's works, but hated him personally. He refutes (_Institutes_, x., i) that "vulgatam falso de me opinionem, qua damnare eum [sc. Senecam] et invisum quoque habere sum creditus." This naturally seemed to Petrarch a very exact analogy to the charges of jealousy brought against him.

21: Cum avo patreque meo vixit. The reader is left to conjecture how intimate Dante and Petracco may have been when they lived together in Florence. Petrarch, in a reference to his father in _Sen_., x., 2, would lead us to infer that he was born about 1252, twelve or thirteen years before Dante. There seems to be no means of deciding whether that statement or the one given in this letter, which makes Dante the older, is nearer the truth.

22: This matter of plagiarism is a subject to which Petrarch often reverts in his letters. He realised the difficulty of producing anything essentially new after the great works of classical antiquity.

23: This is probably a reference, as M. Develay suggests, to a metrical epistle addressed to Giacomo Colonna, the Bishop of Lombez, in which the following lines occur:

_Nil usquam invideo, nullum ferventius odi,_ _Nullum despicio nisi me...._

24: Namely, literary productions in the Italian tongue.

25: Quod in vulgari eloquio, quam in carminibus aut prosa clarior atque altior assurgit. The literal form is retained in the rendering above, as Petrarch's very language is significant of his contempt for the Italian. Prose and verse could only be Latin.

26: The work here referred to, which Petrarch supposed to be an inferior production of Seneca the Philosopher, is now attributed to his father, the Rhetor, of whose existence Petrarch was unaware.

27: This would seem sufficient proof that Petrarch and Boccaccio first met on this occasion of Petrarch's visit to Florence.

28: Petrarch had never been in Florence before, although reckoned as a Florentine. He uses here the phrase _longo postliminio redeuntem_,--referring to the right in the Roman law to return home and resume one's former rank and privileges--a reminiscence possibly of the law school.

29: _Cf_. the _Æneid_, viii., 162 _sqq_., for this and the succeeding allusions.

* * * * *

_The Story of Griselda_

_To Boccaccio_[1]

Your book, written in our mother tongue and published, I presume, during your early years, has fallen into my hands, I know not whence or how. If I told you that I had read it, I should deceive you. It is a very big volume, written in prose and for the multitude. I have been, moreover, occupied with more serious business, and much pressed for time. You can easily imagine the unrest caused by the warlike stir about me, for, far as I have been from actual participation in the disturbances, I could not but be affected by the critical condition of the state. What I did was to run through your book, like a traveller who, while hastening forward, looks about him here and there, without pausing. I have heard somewhere that your volume was attacked by the teeth of certain hounds, but that you defended it valiantly with staff and voice. This did not surprise me, for not only do I well know your ability, but I have learned from experience of the existence of an insolent and cowardly class who attack in the work of others everything which they do not happen to fancy or be familiar with, or which they cannot themselves accomplish. Their insight and capabilities extend no farther; on all other themes they are silent.

My hasty perusal afforded me much pleasure. If the humour is a little too free at times, this may be excused in view of the age at which you wrote, the style and language which you employ, and the frivolity of the subjects, and of the persons who are likely to read such tales. It is important to know for whom we are writing, and a difference in the character of one's listeners justifies a difference in style. Along with much that was light and amusing, I discovered some serious and edifying things as well, but I can pass no definite judgment upon them, since I have not examined the work thoroughly.

As usual, when one looks hastily through a book, I read somewhat more carefully at the beginning and at the end. At the beginning you have, it seeing to me, accurately described and eloquently lamented the condition of our country during that siege of pestilence which forms so dark and melancholy a period in our century. At the close you have placed a story which differs entirely from most that precede it, and which so delighted and fascinated me that, in spite of cares which made me almost oblivious of myself, I was seized with a desire to learn it by heart, so that I might have the pleasure of recalling it for my own benefit, and of relating it to my friends in conversation. When an opportunity for telling it offered itself shortly after, I found that my auditors were delighted. Later it suddenly occurred to me that others, perhaps, who were unacquainted with our tongue, might be pleased with so charming a story, as it had delighted me ever since I first heard it some years ago, and as you had not considered it unworthy of presentation in the mother tongue, and had placed it, moreover, at the end of your book, where, according to the principles of rhetoric, the most effective part of the composition belongs. So one fine day when, as usual, my mind was distracted by a variety of occupations, discontented with myself and my surroundings, I suddenly sent everything flying, and, snatching my pen, I attacked this story of yours. I sincerely trust that it will gratify you that I have of my own free-will undertaken to translate your work, something I should certainly never think of doing for anyone else, but which I was induced to do in this instance by my partiality for you and for the story. Not neglecting the precept of Horace in his _Art of Poetry_ that the careful translator should not attempt to render word for word, I have told your tale in my own language, in some places changing or even adding a few words, for I felt that you would not only permit, but would approve, such alterations.[2]

Although many have admired and wished for my version, it seemed to me fitting that your work should be dedicated to you rather than to anyone else; and it is for you to judge whether I have, by this change of dress, injured or embellished the original. The story returns whence it came; it knows its judge, its home, and the way thither. As you and everyone who reads this knows, it is you and not I who must render account for what is essentially yours. If anyone asks me whether this is all true, whether it is a history or a story, I reply in the words of Sallust, "I refer you to the author "--to wit, my friend Giovanni. With so much of introduction I begin....[3]

My object in thus re-writing your tale was not to induce the women of our time to imitate the patience of this wife, which seems to me almost beyond imitation, but to lead my readers to emulate the example of feminine constancy, and to submit themselves to God with the same courage as did this woman to her husband. Although, as the Apostle James tells us, "God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man," he still may prove us, and often permits us to be beset with many and grievous trials, not that he may know our character, which he knew before we were created, but in order that our weakness should be made plain to ourselves by obvious and familiar proofs. Anyone, it seems to me, amply deserves to be reckoned among the heroes of mankind who suffers without a murmur for God, what this poor peasant woman bore for her mortal husband.

My affection for you has induced me to write at an advanced age what I should hardly have undertaken even as a young man. Whether what I have narrated be true or false I do not know, but the fact that you wrote it would seem sufficient to justify the inference that it is but a tale. Foreseeing this question, I have prefaced my translation with the statement that the responsibility for the story rests with the author; that is, with you. And now let me tell you my experiences with this narrative, or tale, as I prefer to call it.

In the first place, I gave it to one of our mutual friends in Padua to read, a man of excellent parts and wide attainments. When scarcely half-way through the composition, he was suddenly arrested by a burst of tears. When again, after a short pause, he made a manful attempt to continue, he was again interrupted by a sob. He then realised that he could go no farther himself, and handed the story to one of his companions, a man of education, to finish. How others may view this occurrence I cannot, of course, say; for myself, I put a most favourable construction upon it, believing that I recognise the indications of a most compassionate disposition; a more kindly nature, indeed, I never remember to have met. As I saw him weep as he read, the words of the Satirist came back to me:

"Nature, who gave us tears, by that alone Proclaims she made the feeling heart our own; And 't is our noblest, sense."[4]

Some time after, another friend of ours, from Verona (for all is common between us, even our friends), having heard of the effect produced by the story in the first instance, wished to read it for himself. I readily complied, as he was not only a good friend, but a man of ability. He read the narrative from beginning to end without stopping once. Neither his face nor his voice betrayed the least emotion, not a tear or a sob escaped him. "I too," he said at the end, "would have wept, for the subject certainly excites pity, and the style is well adapted to call forth tears, and I am not hard-hearted; but I believed, and still believe, that this is all an invention. If it were true, what woman, whether of Rome or any other nation, could be compared with this Griselda? Where do we find the equal of this conjugal devotion, where such faith, such extraordinary patience and constancy?" I made no reply to this reasoning, for I did not wish to run the risk of a bitter debate in the midst of our good-humoured and friendly discussion. But I had a reply ready. There are some who think that whatever is difficult for them must be impossible for others; they must measure others by themselves, in order to maintain their superiority. Yet there have been many, and there may still be many, to whom acts are easy which are commonly held to be impossible. Who is there who would not, for example, regard a Curtius, a Mucius, or the Decii, among our own people, as pure fictions; or, among foreign nations, Codrus and the Philæni; or, since we are speaking of woman, Portia, or Hypsicratia, or Alcestis, and others like them? But these are actual historical persons. And indeed I do not see why one who can face death for another, should not be capable of encountering any trial or form of suffering....[5]

1: This letter, written in 1373 and containing a Latin translation of Boccaccio's story of Griselda, is printed as a separate work in the _Opera_ (1581), p. 540 _sqq_., but appears as _Sen_., xvii., 3, in Fracassetti's Italian version.

2: The additions are so considerable that Fracassetti, in translating this letter into Italian, could make use of the words of Boccaccio's original in scarcely more than half of the tale.

3: Petrarch's version of the tale is here omitted.

4: Juvenal, xv., 131-3, as translated by William Gifford.

5: The close of this letter is given above, pp. 53 _sqq_. (..."a mole amusing itself with a mirror.")

* * * * *

_On the Italian Language and Literature_

_To Boccaccio_[1]

"I have somewhat to say unto thee," if a poor sinner may use the words of his Saviour, and this something for which you are listening, what should it be but what I am wont to tell you? So prepare your mind for patience and your ears for reproaches. For, although nothing could be more alike than our two minds, I have often noticed with surprise that nothing could be more unlike than our acts and resolutions. I frequently ask myself how this happens, not only in your case but in that of certain others of my friends, in whom I note the same contrast. I find no other explanation than that our common mother, nature, made us the same, but that habit, which is said to be a second nature, has rendered us unlike. Would that we might have lived together, for then we should have been but one mind in two bodies.

You may imagine now that I have something really important to tell you, but you are mistaken;--and, as you well know, a thing must be trivial indeed which the author himself declares to be unimportant, for our own utterances are so dear to us that scarcely anyone is a good judge of his own performances, so prone are we to be misled by partiality for ourselves and our works. You, among many thousands, are the only one to be betrayed into a false estimate of your compositions by aversion and contempt, instead of inordinate love,--unless, mayhap, I am myself deceived in this matter, and attribute to humility what is really due to pride. What I mean by all this you shall now hear.

You are familiar, no doubt, with that widely distributed and vulgar, set of men who live by words, and those not their own, and who have increased to such an irritating extent among us. They are persons of no great ability, but of retentive memories; of great industry too, but of greater audacity. They haunt the antechambers of kings and potentates, naked if it were not for the poetic vesture that they have filched from others. Any especially good bit which this one or that one has turned off, they seize upon, more particularly if it be in the mother tongue, and recite it with huge gusto. In this way they strive to gain the favour of the nobility, and procure money, clothes, or other gifts. Their stock-in-trade is partly picked up here and there, partly obtained directly from the writers themselves, either by begging, or, where cupidity or poverty exists, for money. This last case is described by the Satirist: "He will die of hunger if he does not succeed in selling to Paris his yet unheard _Agave_."[2]

You can easily imagine how often these fellows have pestered me, and I doubt not others, with their disgusting fawning. It is true I suffer less than formerly, owing to my altered studies, or to respect for my age, or to repulses already received; for, lest they should get in the habit of annoying me, I have often sharply refused to aid them, and have not allowed myself to be affected by any amount of insistence. Sometimes indeed, especially when I knew the applicant to be humble and needy, a certain benevolent instinct has led me to assist the poor fellow to a living, with such skill as I possessed. My aid might be of permanent use to the recipient, while it cost me only a short hour of work. Some of those whom I had been induced to assist, and who had left me with their wish fulfilled, but otherwise poor and ill-clad, returned shortly after arrayed in silks, with well-filled bellies and purses, to thank me for the assistance which had enabled them to cast off the burden of poverty. On such occasions I have sometimes been led to vow that I would never refuse this peculiar kind of alms; but there always comes a moment, when, wearied by their importunities, I retract the resolve.

When I asked some of these beggars why they always came to me, and never applied to others, and in particular to you, for assistance, they replied that so far as you were concerned they had often done so, but never with success. While I was wondering that one who was so generous with his property should be so niggardly with his words, they added that you had burnt all the verses which you had ever written in the vulgar tongue. This, instead of satisfying me, only served to increase my astonishment. When I asked the reason of your doing this, they all confessed ignorance and held their tongues, except one. He said that he believed--whether he had actually heard it somewhere or other, I do not know--that you intended to revise all the things which you had written both in your earlier days, and, later, in your prime, in order to give your works, in this revision, the advantage of a mature,--I am tempted to say hoary, mind. Such confidence in the prolongation of our most uncertain existence, especially at your age, seemed to both of us exaggerated. Although I have the greatest confidence in your discretion and vigour of mind, my surprise was only increased by what I had heard. What a perverted idea, I said, to burn up what you wished to revise, so as to have nothing left for revision!

My astonishment continued until at last, on coming to this city, I became intimate with our Donato, who is so faithful and devoted a friend of yours. It was from him that I learned recently, in the course of our daily conversation, not only the fact which I had already heard, but also the explanation of it, which had so long puzzled me. He said that in your earlier years you had been especially fond of writing in the vulgar tongue, and had devoted much time and pains to it, until in the course of your researches and reading you had happened upon my youthful compositions in the vernacular. Then your enthusiasm for writing similar things suddenly cooled. Not content simply to refrain from analogous work in the future, you conceived a great dislike to what you had already done and burned everything, not with the idea of correcting but of destroying. In this way you deprived both yourself and posterity of the fruits of your labours in this field of literature, and for no better reason than that you thought what you had written was inferior to my productions. But your dislike was ill-founded and the sacrifice inexpedient. As for your motive, that is doubtful. Was it humility, which despised itself, or pride, which would be second to none? You who can see your own heart must judge. I can only wander among the various possible conjectures, writing to you, as usual, as if I were talking to myself.

I congratulate you, then, on regarding yourself as inferior to those whose superior you really are. I would far rather share that error than his who, being really inferior, believes himself to be on a higher plane. This reminds me of Lucan of Cordova, a man of the ardent spirit and the genius which pave the way alike to great eminence and to an abyss of failure. Finding himself far advanced in his studies while still young, he became, upon turning over in his mind his age and the successful beginnings of his career, so puffed up that he ventured to compare himself with Virgil. In reciting a portion of a work on the Civil War, which was interrupted by his death, he said in his introductory remarks, "Do I in any way fall short of the _Culex?_"[3] Whether this arrogant speech was noticed by any friend of the poet, or what answer he received, I do not know; for myself, I have often, since I read the passage, inwardly replied indignantly to this braggart: "My fine fellow, thy performance may indeed equal the _Culex_, but what a gulf between it and the _Æneid!_" But why, then, do I not praise your humility, who judge me to be your superior, and praise it the more highly in contrast with the boast of this upstart, who would believe himself superior, or at least equal, to Virgil?

But there is something else here which I would gladly discover, but which is of so obscure a nature that it is not easily cleared up with the pen. I will, however, do the best I can. I fear that your remarkable humility may after all be only pride. This will doubtless seem to many a novel and even surprising name for humility, and if it should prove offensive I will use some other term. I only fear that this signal exhibition of humility is not altogether free from some admixture of haughtiness. I have seen men at a banquet, or some other assembly, rise and voluntarily take the lowest place, because they had not been assigned the head of the table, and this under cover of humility, although pride was the real motive. I have seen another so weak as even to leave the room. Thus anger sometimes, and sometimes pride, leads men to act as though one who did not enjoy the highest seat, which in the nature of things cannot be assigned to more than a single individual, was necessarily unworthy of any place except perhaps the lowest. But there are degrees of glory as well as of merit.

As for you, you show your humility in not assuming the first place. Some, inferior to you both in talents and style, have laid claim to it, and have aroused our indignation, not unmixed with merriment, by their absurd aspirations. Would that the support of the vulgar, which they sometimes enjoy, weighed no more in the market-place than with the dwellers on Parnassus. But not to be able to take the second or third rank, does not that smack of genuine pride? Suppose for the moment that I surpass you, I, who would so gladly be your equal; suppose that you are surpassed by the great master of our mother tongue; beware lest there be more pride in refusing to see yourself distanced by one or the other, especially by your fellow-citizen, or, at most, by a very few, than in soliciting the distinction of the first place for yourself. To long for supremacy may be regarded as the sign of a great mind, but to despise what only approaches supremacy is a certain indication of arrogance.

I have heard that our Old Man of Ravenna,[4] who is by no means a bad judge in such matters, is accustomed, whenever the conversation turns on these matters, to assign you the third place. If this displeases you, and if you think that I prevent your attaining to the first rank--though I am really no obstacle--I willingly renounce all pretensions to precedence, and leave you the second place. If you refuse this I do not think that you ought to be pardoned. If the very first alone are illustrious, it is easy to see how innumerable are the obscure, and how few enjoy the radiance of glory. Consider, moreover, how much safer, and even higher, is the second place. There is someone to receive the first attacks of envy, and, at the risk of his own reputation, to indicate your path; for by watching his course, you will learn when to follow it, and when to avoid it. You have someone to aid you to throw off all slothful habits through your effort to overtake him. You are spurred on to equal him, and not be forever second. Such an one serves as a goad to noble minds and often accomplishes wonders. He who knows how to put up with the second place will ere long deserve the first, while he who scorns the second place has already begun to be unworthy even of that. If you will but consult your memory, you will scarcely find a first-rate commander, philosopher, or poet, who did not reach the top through the aid of just such stimulus.

Furthermore, if the first place is to most persons a source of complacent satisfaction with themselves, and of envy on the part of others, it is certainly also liable to produce inertia. The student as well as the lover is spurred on by jealousy: love without rivalry, and merit without emulation are equally prone to languish. Industrious poverty is much to be preferred to idle opulence. It is better to struggle up a steep declivity with watchful care than to lie sunk in shameful ease; better and safer to trust to the aid of active virtue than to rely upon the distinction of an idle reputation.

These are good reasons, it seems to me, for cheerfully accepting the second place. But what if you are assigned to the third or the fourth? Will this rouse your anger? or have you forgotten the passage where Seneca defends Fabianus Papirius against Lucilius? After assigning Cicero a higher rank, he remarked: "It is no slight thing to be second only to the highest." Then, naming Asinius Pollio next to Cicero, he added, "Nor in such a case is the third place to be despised." Lastly, placing Livy in the fourth rank, he concluded, "What a vast number of writers does he excel who is vanquished by three only, and these three the most gifted!" Does not this apply very well to you, my dear friend? Only, whatever place you occupy, or whomsoever you may seem to see ahead of you, it cannot, in my judgment, be I who precede you. So, eschew the flames, and have mercy on your verses.

If, however, you and others are, in spite of what I say, thoroughly convinced that I must, willy-nilly, be your superior in literary rank, do you really feel aggrieved, and regard it as a shameful thing to be ranked next to me? If this be true, permit me to say that I have long been deceived in you, and that neither your natural modesty nor your love of me is what I had hoped. True friends place those whom they love above themselves. They not only wish to be excelled, but experience an extreme pleasure in being outstripped, just as no fond father would deny that his greatest pleasure consisted in being surpassed by his son. I hoped and hope still that I am inferior to you. I do not claim to be like a dear son to you, or to believe that my reputation is dearer to you than your own. I remember, though, that you, in a moment of friendly anger, once reproached me for this. If you were really sincere, you ought to grant me the right of way with joy. Instead of giving up the race, you should press after me with all your might, and so prevent any other competitor from thrusting himself between us and stealing your place. He who sits in the chariot or runs by his friend's side does not ask who is first, but is only anxious that they two shall be as near as possible. Nothing is sweeter than the longed-for closeness of companionship. Love is everything, precedence next to nothing, among friends. The first are last and the last first, for all are really one in friendship.

So much for the case against you. Let us now turn to the excuses for your conduct. In spite of your own explanation and that which comes to me through such a very good friend of yours, I have tried to discover some higher motive for your action than that which you mention; for the same act may be good or bad according to the motives which dictate it. I will tell you, then, what has occurred to me.

You did not destroy your productions, in a manner so unfair both to you and to them, through false pride, which is quite foreign to your gentle character; nor because you were jealous of someone else, or dissatisfied with your own lot. You were actuated by a noble indignation against the emptiness and vanity of our age, which in its crass ignorance corrupts or, far worse, despises everything good. You wished to withdraw your productions from the judgment of the men of to-day, and, as Virginius once slew his own daughter to save her from shame, so you have committed to the flames your beautiful inventions, the children of your intellect, to prevent their becoming the prey of such a rabble. And now, my dear friend, how near the truth have I guessed? I have indeed often thought of doing the same for my own compositions in the vulgar tongue, few as they are; and it was my own experience which suggested this explanation of your conduct. I should perhaps have done so, had they not been so widely circulated as to have long ago escaped my control. And yet, on the other hand, I have sometimes harboured quite the opposite design, and thought of devoting my whole attention to the vernacular.

To be sure, the Latin, in both prose and poetry, is undoubtedly the nobler language, but for that very reason it has been so thoroughly developed by earlier writers that neither we nor anyone else may expect to add very much to it. The vernacular, on the other hand, has but recently been discovered, and, though it has been ravaged by many, it still remains uncultivated, in spite of a few earnest labourers, and still shows itself capable of much improvement and enrichment. Stimulated by this thought, and by the enterprise of youth, I began an extensive work in that language. I laid the foundations of the structure, and got together my lime and stones and wood. And then I began to consider a little more carefully the times in which we live, the fact that our age is the mother of pride and indolence, and that the ability of the vainglorious fellows who would be my judges, and their peculiar grace of delivery is such that they can hardly be said to recite the writings of others, but rather to mangle them. Hearing their performances again and again, and turning the matter over in my mind, I concluded at length that I was building upon unstable earth and shifting sand, and should simply waste my labours and see the work of my hands levelled by the common herd. Like one who finds a great serpent across his track, I stopped and changed my route,--for a higher and more direct one, I hope. Although the short things I once wrote in the vulgar tongue are, as I have said, so scattered that they now belong to the public rather than to me, I shall take precautions against having my more important works torn to pieces in the same way.

And yet why should I find fault with the unenlightenment of the common people, when those who call themselves learned afford so much more just and serious a ground for complaint? Besides many other ridiculous peculiarities, these people add to their gross ignorance an exaggerated and most disgusting pride. It is this that leads them to carp at the reputation of those whose most trivial sayings they were once proud to comprehend, in even the most fragmentary fashion. O inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble art,--that dares to declare itself not only equal but superior to the glorious past. I say nothing of the vulgar, the dregs of mankind, whose sayings and opinions may raise a laugh but hardly merit serious censure. I will say nothing of the military class and the leaders in war, who do not blush to assert that their time has beheld the culmination and perfection of military art, when there is no doubt that this art has degenerated and is utterly going to ruin in their hands. They have neither skill nor intelligence, but rely entirely upon indolence and chance. They go to war decked out as if for a wedding, bent on meat and drink and the gratification of their lust. They think much more of flight than they do of victory. Their skill lies not in striking the adversary, but in holding out the hand of submission; not in terrifying the enemy, but in pleasing the eyes of their mistresses.[5] But even these false notions may be excused in view of the utter ignorance and want of instruction on the part of those who hold them.

I will pass over the kings, who act as if they thought that their office consisted in purple and gold, in sceptre and diadem, and that, excelling their predecessors in these things, they must excel them likewise in prowess and glory. Although they were put upon the throne for the single purpose of ruling (whence their title, _rex_, is derived), they do not in reality govern the people over whom they are placed, but, as their conduct shows, are themselves governed by their passions. They are rulers of men, but, at the same time, slaves of sloth and luxury. Still ignorance of the past, the ephemeral glory that fortune bestows and the vanity that always attends undue prosperity, may serve to excuse in some measure even these. But what can be said in defence of men of education who ought not to be ignorant of antiquity and yet are plunged in this same darkness and delusion?

You see that I cannot speak of these matters without the greatest irritation and indignation. There has arisen of late a set of dialecticians, who are not only ignorant but demented. Like a black army of ants from some old rotten oak, they swarm forth from their hiding-places and devastate the fields of sound learning. They condemn Plato and Aristotle, and laugh at Socrates and Pythagoras. And, good God! under what silly and incompetent leaders these opinions are put forth! I should prefer not to give a name to this group of men. They have done nothing to merit one, though their folly has made them famous. I do not wish to place among the greatest of mankind those whom I see consorting with the most abject. These fellows have deserted all trustworthy leaders, and glory in the name of those who, whatever they may learn after death, exhibited in this world no trace of power, or knowledge, or reputation for knowledge. What shall we say of men who scorn Marcus Tullius Cicero, the bright sun of eloquence? Of those who scoff at Varro and Seneca, and are scandalised at what they choose to call the crude, unfinished style of Livy and Sallust? And all this in obedience to leaders of whom no one has ever heard, and for whom their followers ought to blush! Once I happened to be present when Virgil's style was the subject of their scornful criticism. Astonished at their crazy outbreak, I turned to a person of some cultivation and asked what he had detected in this famous man to rouse such a storm of reproach. Listen to the reply he gave me, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders: "He is too fond of conjunctions." Arise, O Virgil, and polish the verses that, with the aid of the Muses, thou didst snatch from heaven, in order that they may be fit to deliver into hands like these!

How shall I deal with that other monstrous kind of pedant, who wears a religious garb, but is most profane in heart and conduct; who would have us believe that Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome were ignoramuses, for all their elaborate treatises? I do not know the origin of these new theologians, who do not spare the great teachers, and will not much longer spare the Apostles and the Gospel itself. They will soon turn their impudent tongues even against Christ, unless he, whose cause is at stake, interferes and curbs the raging beasts. It has already become a well-established habit with these fellows to express their scorn by a mute gesture or by some impious observation, whenever revered and sacred names are mentioned. "Augustine," they will say, "saw much, but understood little." Nor do they speak less insultingly of other great men.

Recently one of these philosophers of the modern stamp happened to be in my library. He did not, like the others, wear a religious habit, but, after all, Christianity is not a matter of clothes. He was one of those who think they live in vain unless they are constantly snarling at Christ or his divine teachings. When I cited some passage or other from the Holy Scriptures, he exploded with wrath, and with his face, naturally ugly, still further disfigured by anger and contempt, he exclaimed: "You are welcome to your two-penny church fathers; as for me, I know the man for me to follow, _for I know him whom I have believed_." "You," I replied, "use the words of the Apostle. I would that you would take them to heart!" "Your Apostle," he answered, "was a sower of words and a lunatic." "You reply like a good philosopher," I said. "The first of your accusations was brought against him by other philosophers, and the second to his face by Festus, Governor of Syria. He did indeed sow the word, and with such success that, cultivated by the beneficent plough of his successors and watered by the holy blood of the martyrs, it has borne such an abundant harvest of faith as we all behold." At this he burst forth into a sickening roar of laughter. "Well, be a 'good Christian'![6] As for me, I put no faith in all that stuff. Your Paul and your Augustine and all the rest of the crowd you preach about were a set of babblers. If you could but stomach Averroes you would quickly see how much superior he was to these empty-headed fellows of yours." I was very angry, I must confess, and could scarcely keep from striking his filthy, blasphemous mouth. "It is the old feud between me and other heretics of your class. You can go," I cried, "you and your heresy, and never return." With this I plucked him by the gown, and, with a want of ceremony less consonant with my habits than his own, hustled him out of the house.

There are thousands of instances of this kind, where nothing will prevail,--not even the majesty of the Christian name nor reverence for Christ himself (whom the angels fall down and worship, though weak and depraved mortals may insult him), nor yet the fear of punishment or the armed inquisitors of heresy. The prison and stake are alike impotent to restrain the impudence of ignorance or the audacity of heresy.

Such are the times, my friend, upon which we have fallen; such is the period in which we live and are growing old. Such are the critics of to-day, as I so often have occasion to lament and complain,--men who are innocent of knowledge or virtue, and yet harbour the most exalted opinion of themselves. Not content with losing the words of the ancients, they must attack their genius and their ashes. They rejoice in their ignorance, as if what they did not know were not worth knowing. They give full rein to their licence and conceit, and freely introduce among us new authors and outlandish teachings.

If you, having no other means of defence, have resorted to the fire to save your works from the criticism of such despotic judges, I cannot disapprove the act and must commend your motives. I have done the same with many of my own productions, and almost repent me that I did not include all, while it was yet in my power; for we have no prospect of fairer judges, while the number and audacity of the existing ones grow from day to day. They are no longer confined to the schools, but fill the largest towns, choking up the streets and public squares. We are come to such a pass that I am sometimes angry at myself for having been so vexed by the recent warlike and destructive years, and having bemoaned the depopulation of the earth. It is perhaps depopulated of true men, but was never more densely crowded with vices and the creatures of vice. In short, had I been among the Ædiles, and felt as I do now, I should have acquitted the daughter of Appius Claudius.[7]--But now farewell, as I have nothing more to write to you at present.

VENICE, August 28.

The belief that the Middle Age was an age of faith has so long found universal acceptance that Petrarch's _rencontre_ with a group of men who freely made sport of Christianity may seem anomalous to some. There was, however, a wide-spread and persistent tendency toward rationalism and materialism in the universities during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Christianity was evidently repudiated by no inconsiderable number, for the church found it necessary to promulgate a sweeping condemnation of rationalistic theses at Paris in 1277. Early in the thirteenth century Arabic learning had begun to influence Western Europe, and the writings of Arabic philosophers, especially of Averroes,[8] became widely known. The orthodox schoolmen, like Thomas Aquinas, gladly made use of his commentary upon Aristotle, but rejected his philosophic teachings with horror. Others, however, became enamoured of the Arabic philosophy and deserted their former religious beliefs, even venturing somewhat publicly to denounce Christianity, as fit only for those who were incapable of following Averroes. Among the simple and devout, the Arabian became an object of mysterious abhorrence, so that Orcagna in his frescoes gives him a distinguished place among the damned, with Mohammed and Antichrist.[9]

During his residence in Venice and Padua Petrarch came into close contact with the Averroists, and was led more than once, in his irritation at their unbelief, to attack them violently.[10] Of their philosophical tenets nothing need be said here, as Petrarch probably troubled himself but little about their doctrines. It was enough for him that they called Paul a madman and looked upon Augustine and Ambrose as prating fools. The real interest of Petrarch's assault upon the Averroists lies not so much in his rejection of their heresies as in his attitude toward the intellectual hero of the Middle Ages, Aristotle, who was the accepted authority of those who rejected, as well as of those who implicitly trusted, the Gospel. The importance of this has, however, already been noted.[11]

We have seen how little Petrarch was in sympathy with the intellectual interests of his time. The vast theological literature of the thirteenth century was neither represented in his library nor noticed in his works. Pure logic, which was then looked upon not only as the necessary foundation of all sound learning and the key to all science but as a legitimate and worthy occupation of a lifetime, seemed to him an essentially elementary subject, fit only for boys. As he refused to recognise the supremacy of Aristotle himself, so he rejected the absurd claims made for Aristotle's dialectic. The following letter, written apparently while he was still a young man, shows how correctly he estimated the real educational value of a study with which his predecessors and contemporaries were so notoriously infatuated.

1: _Sen_., v., 3. Written, Fracassetti believes, about 1366.

2: Juvenal, vii., 87.

3: A trifling poem once universally attributed to Virgil.

4: It is not known who is meant here. _Cf._ Fracassetti, _Lettere Senile_, vol. i., p. 283.

5: Machiavelli's _Prince_, chap, xii., contains a similar description of war in his day.

6: Luther reports that in his time, in Rome, they called an earnest believer "bon Christian."

7: Who was fined for speaking against the Roman people.

8: A corruption of the Arabic name of Ibn Roschd, who died in 1198.

9: For this whole matter see Renan's charming book, _Averroes._ Also, Reuter's _Religiöse Aufklärung des Mittelalters._

10: Especially remarkable in this connection is the curious work _De Suiipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia_, the origin of which may be briefly described. A group of Petrarch's young Averroist friends happened one day in a post-prandial conversation to discuss among themselves his real claim to distinction. They decided that his fame rested largely upon the mistaken and ill-judged attentions of popes and princes, and that, although a good man, he could not be regarded as a person of great knowledge or literary power. This frank estimate of his ability reached the ears of Petrarch and naturally irritated the now failing old man, accustomed for many years to the world's adulation. The reply, written a year later, shows unmistakable signs of wounded pride and vanity. The criticism of the young men was, he assumes, dictated purely by envy of his reputation. He is indeed ignorant, but others are still more hopelessly benighted--hence the title, Of His Own Ignorance and That of Others. _Opera_ (1581), pp., 1035-1059.

11: See above, pp. 37 _sqq_. (In no respect, indeed is his greatness...)

* * * * *

_His Aversion to Logicians_

_To Tomasso da Messina_[1]

It is hazardous to engage an enemy who longs rather for battle than for victory. You write to me of a certain old logician who has been greatly excited by my letter, as if I condemned his art. With a growl of rage, he loudly threatened to make war in turn upon our studies, in a letter for which, you say, you have waited many months in vain. Do not wait longer; believe me, it will never come. He retains some traces of decency, and this is a confession that he is ashamed of his style or an acknowledgment of his ignorance. The most implacable in contests with the tongue will not resort to the pen. They are reluctant to show how ill-armed they are, and so follow the Parthian system of warfare, carried on during a rapid retreat, by letting fly a shower of winged words and committing their shafts to the wind.

It is foolhardy, as I have said, to accept an engagement with these fellows upon their own terms. It is indeed from the fighting itself that they derive their chief pleasure; their object is not to discover the truth, but to prolong the argument. But you know Varro's proverb: "Through over-long contention the truth is lost." You need not fear, then, that these warriors will come out into the open fields of honest discussion, whether with tongue or pen. They belong to the class of whom Quintilian speaks in his _Institutes of Oratory_, whom one finds wonderfully warm in disputation, but once get them away from their cavilling, they are as helpless, in a serious juncture, as certain small animals which are active enough in a narrow space, but are easily captured in a field. Hence their reluctance to engage in an open contest. As Quintilian goes on to say, their tergiversations indicate their weakness; they seek, like an indifferent runner, to escape by dodging.

This is what I would impress upon you, my friend; if you are seeking virtue or truth, avoid persons of that stripe altogether. But how shall we escape from these maniacs, if even the isles of the sea are not free from them? So neither Scylla nor Charybdis has prevented this pest from finding its way into Sicily?[2] Nay, this ill is now rather peculiar to islands, as we shall find if we add the logicians of Britain to the new Cyclopes about Ætna. Is this the ground of the striking similarity between Sicily and Britain, which I have seen mentioned in Pomponius Mela's _Cosmographia?_ I had thought that the resemblance lay in the situation of the countries, the almost triangular appearance of both, and perhaps in the perpetual contact which each enjoys with the surrounding sea. I never thought of logicians; I had heard of the Cyclopes, and then of the tyrants, both savage inhabitants; but of the coming of this third race of monsters, armed with two-edged arguments, and fiercer than the burning shores of Taormina itself, I was unaware.

There is one thing which I myself long ago observed, and of which you now warn me anew. These logicians seek to cover their teachings with the splendour of Aristotle's name; they claim that Aristotle was wont to argue in the same way. They would have some excuse, I readily confess, if they followed in the steps of illustrious leaders, for even Cicero says that it would give him pleasure to err with Plato, if err he must. But they all deceive themselves. Aristotle was a man of the most exalted genius, who not only discussed but wrote upon themes of the very highest importance. How can we otherwise explain so vast an array of works, involving such prolonged labour, and prepared with supreme care amid such serious preoccupations--especially those connected with the guardianship of his fortunate pupil--and within the compass, too, of a life by no means long?--for he died at about sixty-three, the age which all writers deem so unlucky. Now why should these fellows diverge so widely from the path of their leader? Why is not the name of Aristotelians a source of shame to them rather than of satisfaction, for no one could be more utterly different from that great philosopher than a man who writes nothing, knows but little, and constantly indulges in much vain declamation? Who does not laugh at their trivial conclusions, with which, although educated men,[3] they weary both themselves and others? They waste their whole lives in such contentions. Not only are they good for nothing else, but their perverted activity renders them actually harmful. Disputations such as they delight in are made a subject of mirth by Cicero and Seneca, in several passages. We find an example in the case of Diogenes, whom a contentious logician addressed as follows: "What I am, you are not." Upon Diogenes conceding this, the logician added, "But I am a man." As this was not denied, the poor quibbler propounded the conclusion, "Therefore you are not a man." "The last statement is not true," Diogenes remarked, "but if you wish it to be true, begin with me in your major premise." Similar absurdities are common enough with them. What they hope to gain from their efforts, whether fame or amusement, or some light upon the way to live righteously and happily, they may know; to me, I confess, it is the greatest of mysteries. Money, certainly, does not appeal at least to noble minds as a worthy reward of study. It is for the mechanical trades to strive for lucre; the higher arts have a more generous end in view.

On hearing such things as these, those of whom we are speaking grow furious;--indeed the chatter of the disputatious man usually verges closely on anger. "So you set yourself up to condemn logic," they cry. Far from it; I know-well in what esteem it was held by that sturdy and virile sect of philosophers, the Stoics, whom our Cicero frequently mentions, especially in his work _De Finibus_. I know that it is one of the liberal studies, a ladder for those who are striving upwards, and by no means a useless protection to those who are forcing their way through the thorny thickets of philosophy. It stimulates the intellect, points out the way of truth, shows us how to avoid fallacies, and finally, if it accomplishes nothing else, makes us ready and quick-witted.

All this I readily admit, but because a road is proper for us to traverse, it does not immediately follow that we should linger on it forever. No traveller, unless he be mad, will forget his destination on account of the pleasures of the way; his characteristic virtue lies, on the contrary, in reaching his goal as soon as possible, never halting on the road. And who of us is not a traveller? We all have our long and arduous journey to accomplish in a brief and untoward time,--on a short, tempestuous, wintry day as it were. Dialectics may form a portion of our road, but certainly not its end: it belongs to the morning of life, not to its evening. We may have done once with perfect propriety what it would be shameful to continue. If as mature men we cannot leave the schools of logic because we have found pleasure in them as boys, why should we blush to play odd and even, or prance upon a shaky reed, or be rocked again in the cradle of our childhood? Nature, with cunning artifice, escapes from dull monotony by her wondrous change of seasons, with their varying aspects. Shall we look for these alternations in the circuit of the year, and not in the course of a long life? The spring brings flowers and the new leaves of the trees, the summer is rich in its harvest, autumn in fruit, and then comes winter with its snows. In this order the changes are not only tolerable but agreeable; but if the order were to be altered, against the laws of nature, they would become distasteful. No one would suffer with equanimity the cold of winter in summer time, or a raging sun during the months where it does not belong.

Who would not scorn and deride an old man who sported with children, or marvel at a grizzled and gouty stripling? What is more necessary to our training than our first acquaintance with the alphabet itself, which serves as the foundation of all later studies; but, on the other hand, what could be more absurd than a grandfather still busy over his letters?

Use my arguments with the disciples of your ancient logician. Do not deter them from the study of logic; urge them rather to hasten through it to better things. Tell the old fellow himself that it is not the liberal arts which I condemn, but only hoary-headed children. Even as nothing is more disgraceful, as Seneca says, than an old man just beginning his alphabet, so there is no spectacle more unseemly than a person of mature years devoting himself to dialectics. But if your friend begins to vomit forth syllogisms, I advise you to take flight, bidding him argue with Enceladus.[4] Farewell.

AVIGNON, March 11.

1: _Fam_., i., 6.

2: His friend's home.

3: _Homines litterati_, probably simply those versed in the Latin tongue.

4: It is interesting to compare these views with those of John of Salisbury who, writing almost two centuries before the time of Petrarch's letter says: "It seemed to me pleasant to revisit my old companions on the Mount [of St. Geneviève at Paris], whom I had left and whom dialectic still detained, and to confer with them touching the old subjects of debate, that we might by mutual comparison measure our respective progress. I found them as before, and where they were before; they did not appear to have advanced an inch in settling the old questions, nor had they added a single proposition. The aims that once inspired them inspired them still; they had progressed in one point only, they had unlearned moderation, they knew not modesty; and that to such an extent that one might despair of their recovery. So experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that, while logic furthers other studies, it is by itself lifeless and barren, nor can it cause the mind to yield the fruit of philosophy except the same conceive from some other source." Migne, _Pat. Lat._, vol. cxcix., p. 869.

III

THE FATHER OF HUMANISM

Quæ cum scholar atque ævi comitibus quædam quasi somnia viderentur, mihi jam tunc, omnia videntem testor Deum, et vera et pæne præsentia videbantur.

_Fam_., xxiv., 1.

Every age has a philosophy of life, which reaches and affects, in greater or less degree, the thought and action of all of its members. To the centuries before Petrarch the world was a place in which to prepare for a life beyond; the noblest subject of thought was theology; the saving of the soul was the one important task. The centuries since have realised in some measure that the present life is precious in itself and is not to be thus subordinated. This shifting of the view is of immense significance; and it is owing to Petrarch, more than to any other one man.

The process was, after all, not so much a shifting as a blending, a powerful modification of the mediæval notions by those of the ancient world. The ancients frankly delighted in sensuous beauty, and felt an unrestrained joy in mere living, and trusted nature and the natural impulses. They were thoroughly human, and the return to them humanised the narrow conceptions of the Middle Ages. And this return was largely Petrarch's work.

Men had conversed with the classics before his day. They were by no means unstudied in mediæval times. John of Salisbury, for example, in the twelfth century, had known almost as many of the Roman poets and moralists and historians as Petrarch himself. He had known them, however, and used them, in a very different fashion. He had read them with no surrender to their charm, and no response to their views concerning life and its uses. We wonder at his knowledge of the text of his classical authors, and at the aptness with which he cites them in illustration of his thought; but we wonder still more at his utter inability to understand their attitude, to find their point of view. Lifelong intercourse with them failed to widen his range of vision. Despite their influence he remained mediæval in all his thought.

But with Petrarch it was otherwise. He first, among the men of the Middle Ages, was endowed with a passionate love for the beauty of ancient literature, and an entire sympathy with its ruling ideas, and at the same time, it must be observed, with a saving incapacity to foresee the disintegration of thought and faith that in the long run would inevitably result from such sympathy. Both in his strength and in his weakness he was eminently fitted to be the founder, or furtherer, of Humanism.

Petrarch's love of the classics began in admiration of their more superficial charm, which is just what would be expected of the youth who wrote the graceful lyrics of the _Canzoniere_. But this feeling developed soon into a perception of their deeper beauty and significance. At the time when he first becomes thoroughly known to us as a student of antiquity we are amazed at the justness of his appreciation. Only occasionally does he betray the fact that he is a man of the Middle Ages, hampered by a narrow intellectual inheritance; and that his work is that of a pioneer, in a country which is absolutely unexplored.

Of these rare limitations we detect the fewest traces in his criticism of Cicero. This may be accounted for largely on the ground that Cicero and Petrarch were men of the same temperament and cast of mind. They were both typical men of letters. The man of letters is intellectually alert; sensitive to impressions and able to report them; hospitable to all the ideas of his time; sometimes inconsistent, because of this very catholicity; and often despised in consequence by practical men, although in reality more practical than they, inasmuch as he has the art of communicating his flashes of insight and his generous enthusiasm to others, who in the end reconcile his inconsistencies and make his dreams come true. This is an exceptional character, but Cicero sustained it fully, and so did Petrarch too. They were thus of the same stamp. Moreover, their circumstances were similar in many respects. Cicero's task as an interpreter of Greek thought was not unlike Petrarch's life-work. It was impossible, with all these likenesses, that the one, however defective his knowledge, should fail to comprehend the other.

Petrarch's letters afford countless illustrations of the truth of these statements. In outward form, to be sure, and once in a while in their material and the treatment of it, they suggest rather Seneca than Cicero. That, however, is easily explained. Petrarch's epistolary ways had been fully determined before ever he saw Cicero's correspondence, or any portion of it.[1] So it was quite impossible that he should follow him in matters of fashion and form. But in spirit and intention, in all their deeper affinities, the letters are distinctly Ciceronian, akin to Cicero's essays and treatises. Cicero's style is plainly Petrarch's ideal, although he is too wise to imitate it slavishly. And he falls, at his best, not very far short of Cicero's clearness and animation, his variety, his aptness of quotation and illustration. A clearer case of sympathetic comprehension of another, and of reproduction without imitation, it would be hard to find.

Next to Cicero, Petrarch cared most among Roman writers for Virgil. One would have expected to find this order reversed,--to find the poet of the _Africa_ far more devoted to his great forerunner than to one who was essentially unpoetical, a rhetorician and prosaist. The explanation of the seeming anomaly is twofold. In the first place, it was in temperament only that Petrarch was a poet, and not, after the splendid lyrical outburst of the _Canzoniere_, in the whole compass of his thought and feeling. He could not have done the work which he did if it had been otherwise. It was necessary that the first Humanist should combine with the poet's openness of mind, and love of whatever is beautiful, scholarly patience and a willingness to lead a scholar's life. And then, in the second place, Petrarch was debarred from full appreciation of Virgil by an inability to escape from the dominion of certain mediæval conceptions of poetry.

For one thing, he valued poetry largely in proportion as it is made the vehicle of criticism of life, of the more obvious sort. One is surprised, in examining the numerous quotations from Virgil that are scattered throughout the letters, to find how invariably they are chosen either because they are strikingly rhetorical in form or in consequence of their didactic quality. Poetry seems to have become to Petrarch, as his life and his studies advanced and he drew farther away in time and temper from his early creative period, little more than a somewhat finer form of prose. Virgil, with all his reverence for him, was not unlike another Cicero. He says in one of his letters: "Our beloved Cicero is beyond doubt the father of Latin eloquence. Next to him comes Virgil. Or perhaps, since there are some who dislike the order in which I am placing them, I had better say that Tullius and Maro are the two parents of Roman literature." Such remarks, which are not infrequent, are indicative of an incapacity to feel keenly and enjoy deeply what is finest in Virgil. Petrarch seems to us to-day like a child, who values the beautiful commonplaces of the poet more highly than his occasional soundings of the depths and mysteries of life. He had no adequate appreciation of Virgil's 'majestic sadness,' his 'pathetic half lines,' his 'tears for the things that are.'

To this same insensitiveness on the æsthetic side we must ascribe Petrarch's inability to free himself from the mediæval delusion as to the profound allegorical significance of the _Æneid,_ and of all other noble poetry as well. A true poet may entertain very strange theories concerning the nature of his art, but in his better moments he will rise above them and unconsciously belie them, both in his practice and in his criticism of others. This Petrarch, after his early youth, never did. His highest aim in his own poetical compositions was to set forth moral truths under an obscure veil of allegory, and his greatest delight in studying the poets of antiquity was to penetrate the veil under, which he believed they had hidden their wisdom. Dante's chance lines in the ninth book of the _Inferno_ give exact expression to this ruling thought of his:

O voi che avete gl' intelletti sani, Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde Sotto il velame degli versi strani!

Dante's application of this idea, however, was one thing and Petrarch's another. Petrarch aimed at nothing worthier than a multitude of minute and trivial correspondences. The effect upon his verse is indicated by the letter to his brother Gherardo which is given toward the close of this chapter. The effect upon his criticism may be learned by examining certain other letters, in the _Seniles_. In one of these he says:[2]

"Virgil's subject, as I understand the matter, is The Perfect Man.... In the passage that you ask me to explain I look upon the winds as nothing more nor less than blasts of anger and mad desire, which disturb with their wild storms the quiet of our life, as tempests do some tranquil sea. Æolus is our reason, which curbs and controls these headstrong passions. If it did not do so they would sweep away sea and land and the overarching sky, that is, our blood and flesh and bones and our very souls, and plunge them down to death and destruction:

... maria ac terras cœlumque profundum quippe ferant rapidi secum.

The dark caverns where Virgil represents them as being hidden away, what are they but the hollow and hidden parts of our bodies, where, according to Plato's determination, the passions dwell in abodes of their own, in the breast and entrails? The mountain mass which is placed above them is the head, where Plato thinks the reason has its home.... Venus, who meets them in the middle of the wood, is pleasure, whose pursuit by us becomes hotter and keener toward the middle of our life. Her assumption of a maidenly look and air is for the purpose of deceiving the unwary. If we saw her as she is we should flee from her in fear and trembling; for, as there is nothing more tempting than pleasure, so there is nothing more foul. Her garments are girded up because her flight is swift. For this same reason she is compared to the swiftest of creatures and things.[3] It cannot be denied that nothing swifter exists, whether you consider her comprehensively or part by part; for pleasure as a whole passes from us very soon, and even while it still abides with us each taste of it lasts but a moment. And then, finally, she appears in the garb of a huntress, because she hunts for the souls of miserable mortals. And she has a bow, and has flowing hair, in order that she may smite us and charm us."[4]

Petrarch's love for Cicero and Virgil sprang from what one may call the fundamental humanistic impulse, delight in the free play of the mind among ideas that are stimulating and beautiful. His devotion to Livy came, in part, from a different source, from a singular sort of patriotism. He felt that he, and every other Italian of his day, was descended in a certain sense from the Romans of old; that their glory was his rightful heritage; that Rome, the ancient Rome, which he found still in existence beneath the wretched mediæval stronghold, was the city of his love and allegiance. Livy's pages accordingly were to him the record of the great deeds of his forefathers. He studied them with the utmost eagerness.

Under the influence of one or the other of these two passions, the thirst for new truth and beauty and the love of the past, or of both of them in conjunction, Petrarch laboured strenuously, until he had gathered together from a hundred obscure sources all the remains of Roman literature that were obtainable in his day, and had made himself familiar with them. Greek literature, unfortunately, it was impossible for him to know. In spite of a lifelong desire, and at least one determined effort, he was unable to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek language.[5] He read in barren Latin translations more or less of Plato and Aristotle and Homer, but this could afford him nothing like an adequate conception of the power and beauty of the literature as a whole. It is a sad pity that he was so handicapped, for if the first Humanist had known and appreciated Homer and Plato and Sophocles, as he did Cicero and Virgil and Seneca and Livy, all our modern culture would be something far finer. We should be simpler and clearer in our conceptions, and better developed æsthetically. If Hellenic influences have never played their due part in our education, if the proportion between the Greek and the Roman elements has been unnatural, this is owing mainly to the insufficient opportunities of Petrarch and his earliest disciples.

To the classical authors that he did possess he devoted a prolonged and intense study that has very rarely been equalled. He followed faithfully his own injunctions given in the _De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ:_ "If you would win glory from your books you must know them, and not merely have them; must stow them away, not in your library, but in your memory, not in your bookcases, but in your brain." Annotations in his hand on the manuscripts that have been traced back to him[6] show that he weighed with care every word of his favourite writers. But external evidence like this is not necessary. Every page of his letters, and of all his other Latin writings too, is proof in itself that as far as his limitations permitted he had absorbed the very spirit of his beloved classics.

The letters show also how eager he was to hand on to others the light that he had gained from these studies. He had as wide and varied an acquaintance as any man of his time, thanks to the fame that he had won in his youth by his verses, and to the attraction that he exercised upon everyone in later life, through his personal charm and his remarkable intellectual powers; and one of the inevitable consequences of such a connection was a correspondence that was both active and large. He wrote to the emperor and the pope, to kings and their regents, to churchmen of every degree, to scholars in almost all parts of Europe, to men of every profession, every age, every taste; and he wrote always as a Humanist, a lover of the classics, who found in them the quintessence of human wisdom. Men everywhere were ready for broader views, deeper knowledge, keener life, and he, through these letters and through personal contact, stimulated their longing and showed them where they might find that which would satisfy it. The influence that he thus exerted is incalculable. This volume is but an effort to give some comprehension of it.

1: He did not discover the group _Ad Atticum_ until 1345, when he was more than forty years old. And Voigt and Viertel have shown that the very existence of the _Ad Familiares_ was unknown to him.

2: _Sen_., iv., 4

3: ......... qualis equos Threissa fatigat Harpalyce volucremque fuga prævertitur Hebrum.

4: Petrarch sometimes applies this method of criticism more wisely and with better results. _Cf. Fam._, xiv., 1 (vol. ii., pp. 268, 269).

5: There was no apparatus for the study of Greek at that time. Oral instruction from Greek or Byzantine scholars was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was difficult to secure, as Petrarch's efforts and failure prove.

6: Through the patience and ingenuity of M. de Nolhac.

* * * * *

Of the letters that follow the first four are given for the sake of showing the range and quality of Petrarch's classical scholarship. They are taken, with one exception, from the letters to dead authors, which constitute a large part of the twenty-fourth book of the _Familiares_. The first is addressed to Cicero.

_To Marcus Tullius Cicero_[1]

Your letters I sought for long and diligently; and finally, where I least expected it, I found them. At once I read them, over and over, with the utmost eagerness. And as I read I seemed to hear your bodily voice, O Marcus Tullius, saying many things, uttering many lamentations, ranging through many phases of thought and feeling. I long had known how excellent a guide you have proved for others; at last I was to learn what sort of guidance you gave yourself.

Now it is your turn to be the listener. Hearken, wherever you are, to the words of advice, or rather of sorrow and regret, that fall, not unaccompanied by tears, from the lips of one of your successors, who loves you faithfully and cherishes your name. O spirit ever restless and perturbed! in old age--I am but using your own words--self-involved in calamities and ruin! what good could you think would come from your incessant wrangling, from all this wasteful strife and enmity? Where were the peace and quiet that befitted your years, your profession, your station in life? What Will-o'-the-wisp tempted you away, with a delusive hope of glory; involved you, in your declining years, in the wars of younger men; and, after exposing you to every form of misfortune, hurled you down to a death that it was unseemly for a philosopher to die? Alas! the wise counsel that you gave your brother, and the salutary advice of your great masters, you forgot. You were like a traveller in the night, whose torch lights up for others the path where he himself has miserably fallen.

Of Dionysius I forbear to speak; of your brother and nephew, too; of Dolabella even, if you like. At one moment you praise them all to the skies; at the next fall upon them with sudden maledictions. This, however, could perhaps be pardoned. I will pass by Julius Cæsar, too, whose well-approved clemency was a harbour of refuge for the very men who were warring against him. Great Pompey, likewise, I refrain from mentioning. His affection for you was such that you could do with him what you would. But what insanity led you to hurl yourself upon Antony? Love of the republic, you would probably say. But the republic had fallen before this into irretrievable ruin, as you had yourself admitted. Still, it is possible that a lofty sense of duty, and love of liberty, constrained you to do as you did, hopeless though the effort was. That we can easily believe of so great a man. But why, then, were you so friendly with Augustus? What answer can you give to Brutus? If you accept Octavius, said he, we must conclude that you are not so anxious to be rid of all tyrants as to find a tyrant who will be well-disposed toward yourself. Now, unhappy man, you were to take the last false step, the last and most deplorable. You began to speak ill of the very friend whom you had so lauded, although he was not doing any ill to you, but merely refusing to prevent others who were. I grieve, dear friend, at such fickleness. These shortcomings fill me with pity and shame. Like Brutus, I feel no confidence in the arts in which you are so proficient. What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions? Ah! how much better it would have been, how much more fitting for a philosopher, to have grown old peacefully in the country, meditating, as you yourself have somewhere said, upon the life that endures for ever, and not upon this poor fragment of life; to have known no fasces, yearned for no triumphs, found no Catilines to fill the soul with ambitious longings!--All this, however, is vain. Farewell, forever, my Cicero.

Written in the land of the living; on the right bank of the Adige, in Verona, a city of Transpadane Italy; on the 16th of June, and in the year of that God whom you never knew the 1345th.

1: _Fam._, xxiv., 3. This epistle was written very soon after Petrarch's discovery, at Verona, of the _Letters to Atticus and Quintus_ and the _Correspondence with Brutus_, known collectively as the _Letters addressed to Atticus_. It undoubtedly gives us the impressions derived from the first eager perusal of these.

It will be observed that Petrarch is less at his ease here than in his ordinary correspondence. One feels in all his letters to the great men of the past a certain constraint. He was awe-struck, and his style consequently is a little self-conscious and laboured.

* * * * *

With that should go the following interesting little account of a controversy between Petrarch and a certain aged scholar whom he met in the course of one of his journeys. Nothing could afford a clearer insight into either the nature of Petrarch's own feeling for the classics or the general humanistic conditions of the time. This is one of the letters, as the opening sentences show, that were carefully revised for the public.

_The Old Grammarian of Vicenza,_

_To Pulice di Vicenza_[1]

On my way I stopped overnight in one of Vicenza's suburbs, and there I found something new to write about. It happened that I had left Padua not much before noon, and so did not reach the outskirts of your city until the sun was getting low. I tried to make up my mind whether I had better put up there or push on a little farther; for I was in a hurry, and the days are long now, and it would be light for a good while yet. I was still hesitating, when lo!--for who can remain hidden from the friends who love him?--all my doubts were happily resolved by your arrival, in company with several other men of mark, such as that little city has always produced in great abundance. My mind was tossing this way and that, but you and your companions, with your pleasant varied talk, furnished the cable that bound it fast. I planned to go, but still stayed on; and did not realise that the daylight was slipping away from me until night was actually at hand. So I discovered once again what I had observed often before, that there is nothing that filches time away from us, without our perceiving it, like converse with our friends. They are the greatest of all thieves of time. And yet we ought to deem no time less truly stolen from us, less truly lost out of our lives, than such as is expended (next to God) upon them.

Well, not to review the story at too great length, you remember that some one made mention of Cicero, as will very often happen among men of literary tastes. This name at once brought our desultory conversation to an end. We all turned our thoughts toward him. Nothing but Cicero was discussed after that. As we sat and feasted together we vied with one another in singing his praises. Still, there is nothing in this world that is absolutely perfect; never has the man existed in whom the critic, were he ever so lenient, would see nothing at all to reprehend. So it chanced that while I expressed admiration for Cicero, almost without reservation, as a man whom I loved and honoured above all others, and amazement too at his golden eloquence and his heavenly genius, I found at the same time a little fault with his fickleness and inconsistency, traits that are revealed everywhere in his life and works. At once I saw that all who were present were astonished at so unusual an opinion, and one among them especially so. I refer to the old man, your fellow-citizen, whose name has gone from me, although his image is fresh in my memory, and I revere him, both for his years and for his scholarship.

Well, the circumstances seemed to demand that I fetch the manuscript of my correspondence with my friends, which I had with me in my chest. It was brought in, and added fuel to the flame. For among the letters that were written to my contemporaries there are a few, inserted with an eye to variety and for the sake of a little diversion in the midst of my more serious labours, that are addressed to some of the more illustrious men of ancient times. A reader who was not forewarned would be amazed at these, finding names so old and of such renown mingled with those of our own day. Two of them are to Cicero himself; one criticising his character, the other praising his genius. These two you read, while the others listened; and then the strife of words grew warmer. Some approved of what I had written, admitting that Cicero deserved my censure. But the old man stood his ground, more stubbornly even than before. He was so blinded by love of his hero and by the brightness of his name that he preferred to praise him even when he was in the wrong; to embrace faults and virtues together, rather than make any exceptions. He would not be thought to condemn anything at all in so great a man. So instead of answering our arguments he rang the changes again and again upon the splendour of Cicero's fame, letting authority usurp the place of reason. He would stretch out his hand and say imploringly, "Gently, I beg of you, gently with my Cicero." And when we asked him if he found it impossible to believe that Cicero had made mistakes, he would close his eyes and turn his face away and exclaim with a groan, as if he had been smitten, "Alas! alas! Is my beloved Cicero accused of doing wrong?" just as if we were speaking not of a man but of some god. I asked him, accordingly, whether in his opinion Tullius was a god, or a man like others. "A god," he replied; and then, realising what he had said, he added, "a god of eloquence." "Oh, very well!" I answered; "if he is a god, he certainly could not have erred. However, I never heard him styled so before. And yet, if Cicero calls Plato his god, why should not you in turn speak of Cicero as yours?--except that it is not in harmony with our religious beliefs for men to fashion gods for themselves as they may fancy." "I am only jesting," said he; "I know that Tullius was a man, but he was a man of godlike genius." "That is better," I responded; "for when Quintilian called him heavenly he spoke no more than the truth. But then, if you admit that he was a man, it follows necessarily that he could make mistakes, and did so." As I spoke these words he shuddered and turned away, as if they were aimed not at another man's reputation but at his own life. What could I say, I who am myself so great an admirer of Cicero's genius? I felt that the old scholar was to be envied for his ardour and devotion, which had something of the Pythagorean savour. I was rejoiced at finding such reverence for even one great man; such almost religious regard, so fervent that to suspect any touch of human weakness in its object seemed like sacrilege. I was amazed, too, at having discovered a person who cherished a love greater than mine for the man whom I always had loved beyond all others; a person who in old age still held, deeply rooted in his heart, the opinions concerning him which I remember to have entertained in my boyhood; and who, notwithstanding his advanced years, was incapable of arguing that if Cicero was a man it followed that in some cases, in many indeed, he must have erred, a conclusion that I have been forced, by common sense and by knowledge of his life, to accept at this earlier stage of my development,--although this conviction does not alter the fact that the beauty of his work delights me still, beyond that of any other writer. Why, Tullius himself, the very man of whom we are speaking, took this view, for he often bewailed his errors, bitterly. If, in our eagerness to praise him, we deny that he thus understood himself, we deprive him of a large part of his renown as a philosopher, the praise, namely, that is due to self-knowledge and modesty.

To return, however, to that day; after a long discussion we were compelled by the lateness of the hour to desist, and separated with the question still unsettled. But as we parted you asked me to send you from my first resting-place, inasmuch as the shortness of the time would not let me attend to it just then, a copy of each of these letters of mine, in order that you might look into the matter a little more carefully, and be in a position to act as a mediator between the parties, or, possibly, as a champion of Cicero's steadfastness and consistency. I approve of your intention, and send the copies herewith. I do so, strange to say, with a fear that I may be victorious, and a hope that I may be vanquished. And one thing more: I must tell you that if you do prove the victor you have a larger task on your hands than you now imagine. For Annæus Seneca, whom I criticise in my very next letter in a similar way, insists that you act as his champion too.

I have dealt familiarly with these great geniuses, and perhaps boldly, but lovingly, but sorrowfully, but truthfully, I think[2]; with somewhat more of truthfulness, in fact, than I myself relish. There are many things in both of them that delight me, only a few that trouble me. Of these few I felt constrained to write; perhaps to-day I should feel otherwise. For, although I have grouped these letters together at the end, it is only because their subject-matter is so unlike the others; they came from the anvil long ago.

The fact is, I still grieve over the fate of these great men; but I do not lament their faults any the less because of that. Furthermore, I beg you to note that I say nothing against Seneca's private life, nor against Cicero's attitude toward the state. Do not confuse the two cases. It is Cicero alone whom we are discussing now; and I am not forgetting that he as consul was vigilant and patriotic, and cured the disease from which the republic was suffering; nor that as a private citizen he always loved his country faithfully. But what of his fickleness in friendship; and his bitter quarrels upon slight provocation,--quarrels that brought ruin upon himself and good to no one; and his inability to understand his own position and the condition of the republic, so unlike his usual acumen; and, finally, the spectacle of a philosopher, in his old age, childishly fond of useless wrangling? These things I cannot praise. And remember that they are things concerning which no unbiassed judgment can be formed, by you or anyone else, without a careful reading of the entire correspondence of Cicero, which suggested this controversy.[3]

May 13th, _en route_.

1: _Fam_., xxiv., 2.

2: This artificial repetition of the adversative conjunction is a trick of style that Petrarch is very fond of.

3: This last sentence, with its schoolmasterly tone, is an interesting revelation of Petrarch's feeling of superiority, in point of scholarship, to all of his associates. It was a feeling that the facts fully justified.

* * * * *

Of the two letters addressed directly to Cicero himself, and referred to in the preceding epistle, one has already been given. The other is, in part, as follows:

_To Marcus Tullius Cicero._[1]

If my earlier letter gave you offence,--for, as you often have remarked, the saying of your contemporary in the _Andria_ is a faithful one, that compliance begets friends, truth only hatred,--you shall listen now to words that will soothe your wounded feelings and prove that the truth need not always be hateful. For, if censure that is true angers us, true praise, on the other hand, gives us delight.

You lived then, Cicero, if I may be permitted to say it, like a mere man, but spoke like an orator, wrote like a philosopher. It was your life that I criticised; not your mind, nor your tongue; for the one fills me with admiration, the other with amazement. And even in your life I feel the lack of nothing but stability, and the love of quiet that should go with your philosophic professions, and abstention from civil war, when liberty had been extinguished and the republic buried and its dirge sung.

See how different my treatment of you is from yours of Epicurus, in your works at large, and especially in the _De Finibus_. You are continually praising his life, but his talents you ridicule. I ridicule in you nothing at all. Your life does awaken my pity, as I have said; but your talents and your eloquence call for nothing but congratulation. O great father of Roman eloquence! not I alone but all who deck themselves with the flowers of Latin speech render thanks unto you. It is from your well-springs that we draw the streams that water our meads. You, we freely acknowledge, are the leader who marshals us; yours are the words of encouragement that sustain us; yours is the light that illumines the path before us. In a word, it is under your auspices that we have attained to such little skill in this art of writing as we may possess....

You have heard what I think of your life and your genius. Are you hoping to hear of your books also; what fate has befallen them, how they are esteemed by the masses and among scholars? They still are in existence, glorious volumes, but we of to-day are too feeble a folk to read them, or even to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your fame extends far and wide; your name is mighty, and fills the ears of men; and yet those who really know you are very few, be it because the times are unfavourable, or because men's minds are slow and dull, or, as I am the more inclined to believe, because the love of money forces our thoughts in other directions. Consequently right in our own day, unless I am much mistaken, some of your books have disappeared, I fear beyond recovery. It is a great grief to me, a great disgrace to this generation, a great wrong done to posterity. The shame of failing to cultivate our own talents, thereby depriving the future of the fruits that they might have yielded, is not enough for us; we must waste and spoil, through our cruel and insufferable neglect, the fruits of your labours too, and of those of your fellows as well, for the fate that I lament in the case of your own books has befallen the works of many another illustrious man.

It is of yours alone, though, that I would speak now. Here are the names of those among them whose loss is most to be deplored: the _Republic_, the _Praise of Philosophy_, the treatises on the _Care of Property_, on the _Art of War_, on _Consolation_, on _Glory_,--although in the case of this last my feeling is rather one of hopeful uncertainty than of certain despair. And then there are huge gaps in the volumes that have survived. It is as if indolence and oblivion had been worsted, in a great battle, but we had to mourn noble leaders slain, and others lost or maimed. This last indignity very many of your books have suffered, but more particularly the _Orator_, the _Academics_, and the _Laws_. They have come forth from the fray so mutilated and disfigured that it would have been better if they had perished outright.

Now, in conclusion, you will wish me to tell you something about the condition of Rome and the Roman republic: the present appearance of the city and whole country, the degree of harmony that prevails, what classes of citizens possess political power, by whose hands and with what wisdom the reins of empire are swayed, and whether the Danube, the Ganges, the Ebro, the Nile, the Don, are our boundaries now, or in very truth the man has arisen who 'bounds our empire by the ocean-stream, our fame by the stars of heaven,' or 'extends our rule beyond Garama and Ind,' as your friend the Mantuan has said. Of these and other matters of like nature I doubt not you would very gladly hear. Your filial piety tells me so, your well-known love of country, which you cherished even to your own destruction. But indeed it were better that I refrained. Trust me, Cicero, if you were to hear of our condition to-day you would be moved to tears, in whatever circle of heaven above, or Erebus below, you may be dwelling. Farewell, forever.

Written in the world of the living; on the left bank of the Rhone, in Transalpine Gaul; in the same year, but in the month of December, the 19th day.

1: _Fam_., xxiv., 4.

* * * * *

Over against the foregoing should be placed a part at least of the long letter addressed to Homer. This will serve to correct the somewhat too favourable impression of Petrarch's critical insight that the letters to Cicero may have induced, and will reveal some of the limitations of his scholarship.

_To Homer_[1]

Long before your letter[2] reached me I had formed an intention of writing to you, and I should really have done it if it had not been for the lack of a common language. I am not so fortunate as to have learned Greek,[3] and the Latin tongue, which you once spoke, by the aid of our writers,[4] you seem of late, through the negligence of their successors, to have quite forgotten. From both avenues of communication, consequently, I have been debarred, and so have kept silence. But now there comes a man[5] who restores you to us, single-handed, and makes you a Latin again.

Your Penelope cannot have waited longer nor with more eager expectation for her Ulysses than I did for you. At last, though, my hope was fading gradually away. Except for a few of the opening lines of certain books, from which there seemed to flash upon me the face of the friend whom I had been longing to behold, a momentary glimpse, dim through distance, or, rather, the sight of his streaming hair, as he vanished from my view,--except for this no hint of a Latin Homer had come to me, and I had no hope of being able ever to see you face to face. For as regards the little book that is circulated under your name, while I cannot say whose it is I do feel sure that it is yours only as it has been culled from you and accredited to you, and is not your real work at all.[6] This friend of ours, however, if he lives, will restore you to us in your entirety. He is now at work, and we are beginning to enjoy not only the treasures of wisdom that are stored away in your divine poems but also the sweetness and charm of your speech. One fragment has come to my hands already, Grecian precious ointment in Latin vessels....[7]

To turn now to details, I am very eager for knowledge, and consequently was delighted beyond all measure and belief by what you wrote about your instructors, of whom I had never before heard, although now I shall reverence them because of the merits of their great pupil; and about the origin of poetry, which you explain at the greatest length; and about the earliest followers of the Muses, among whom, in addition to the well-known dwellers upon Helicon, you place Cadmus, the son of Agenor, and a certain Hercules, whether the great Alcides or not I do not fully understand; and, finally, about the place of your nativity, concerning which there used to be very vague and misty views here in my country, and no great clearness, so far as I can see, among your compatriots; about your wanderings, too, in search of knowledge, into Phœnicia and Egypt, whither, several centuries after you, the illustrious philosophers Pythagoras and Plato also made their way, and the Athenian law-giver who in his late years wooed the Pierian Muses, wise old Solon, who while he lived never ceased to admire you, and when he died doubtless became one of your cherished friends; and, last of all, about the number of your works, the majority of which even the Italians, your nearest neighbours, have never so much as heard of. As for the barbarians, who bound us upon two sides, and from whom I would that we were separated not by lofty Alps alone but by the whole wide sea as well, they scarcely have heard--I will not say of your books, but even of your very name. You see how trivial a thing is this wonderful fame which we mortals sigh for so windily....

And now what shall I say about the matter of imitation? When you found yourself soaring so high on the wings of genius you ought to have foreseen that you would always have imitators. You should be glad that your endowments are such that many men long to be like you, although not many can succeed. Why not be glad, you who are sure of holding always the first place, when I, the least of mortals, am more than glad, am in fact puffed up with pride, because I have grown great enough for others--though I scarcely can believe that this is really true--to desire to imitate and copy me? In my case the pride and joy would only increase if among these imitators there should be found some few who were capable of surpassing me. I pray--not your Apollo, but the true God of Intellect whom I worship, to crown the efforts of all who may deem it worth their while to follow after me, and to grant that they may find it an easy thing to come up with me, and outstrip me too....

But I am wandering. It was my intention to speak to you of Virgil, than whom, as Flaccus says, this earth has produced no soul more spotless; and to suggest to you, great master of us both, certain excuses for his conduct.... I admit the truth of everything that you say concerning him, but it does not necessarily follow that I lend a sympathetic ear to the charges that you base upon this failure of his to make anywhere any mention of your name, laden and bedecked though he is with your spoils,--mention, you remind me, such as Lucan made, remembering in grateful strains the honour due to Smyrna's bard. Far from that, I am even going to suggest to you additional cause for complaint. Flaccus also remembers you, in many a passage, and always with the highest praise. In one place he exalts you above the very philosophers; in another he assigns to you the highest seat among the poets. Naso remembers you too, and Juvenal, and Statius. But why try to mention all who mention Homer? There is scarcely one of our writers but that belongs in that class. Why is it then, you will say, that I find the one man from whom I deserved most gratitude proving so utterly ungrateful? Before I answer you let me furnish you still another reason for complaint. Observe that he was not equally ungrateful in every case. Musæus and Linus and Orpheus are referred to more than once. So also, and with even greater humility, Hesiod the Ascræan and Theocritus of Syracuse. And finally, a thing that he never would have done if he had had any touch of jealousy, he takes pains to speak of Varus, and Gallus, and certain others of his contemporaries.

Well, have I aggravated sufficiently the resentment which I proposed to assuage, or entirely remove? The natural conclusion, certainly, for anyone to draw, if this were all that I had to say. But it is not; we have not considered yet the reasons for all this, and given them their due weight, and that we should always do, especially when we are sitting in judgment upon others.

Is it not true, then, that he chose Theocritus for his guide and model in the Bucolics, and Hesiod in the Georgics, and, having done so, took pains to introduce the name of each in its appropriate place? Yes, you will say; but after choosing me for his third model, in his heroic poem, what was there to prevent his making some mention there, in like manner, of my name? He would have done so, believe me, for he was the gentlest and most unassuming of men, as is proved by all that is written of him and all that we know of his daily life; but impious death forbade. The others he had referred to wherever he thought of it or found it convenient; for you, to whom he owed so much more, he was reserving a place that had been determined not by mere chance but by the most careful consideration. And what place, think you? What but the most prominent and conspicuous of all? The end of his glorious work!--it was for that that he was waiting; it was there that he was intending to exalt you and your name to the stars in resounding verse, and to hail you as his leader. What better place to praise a leader than at the journey's end? You have good reason, then, for lamenting his too early death, and so has the whole Italian world; but for reproaching your friend, none whatever....

Now, in conclusion, I must run over the various little complaints that are scattered up and down the whole length of your letter. You grieve because you have been mangled so by your imitators. But do you not see that it could not possibly have been otherwise? No one could deal comprehensively with so great a genius. Then you mourn because your name, which was held in great honour by the lawyers and physicians of old, is despised by their successors of to-day. But you forget that these professions are filled now by men of a very different stamp from those who followed them in former times. If they were of the same sort they would love and cherish the same things. So put away your indignation and your grief, and be of good hope; for to have gained the disfavour of the evil and the ignorant is to have given sure sign of virtue and genius....

A word now with reference to your complaint that the valley of Fiesole and the banks of the Arno can furnish only three men who know you and love you. You ought not to wonder at this. It is enough; indeed, it is a very great deal, more than I should have expected, to discover three Pierian spirits in a city so entirely given up to gain. But even if you think otherwise you need not be discouraged; it is a large and populous place, and if you seek you will find there a fourth. And to these four I could once have added a fifth, a man who well deserves to be honoured thus, for the laurels of Peneus bind his brow--or of Alpheus rather. But alas! the great Babylon beyond the Alps has contrived to steal him away from us. To find five such men at one time and in one city, is that, think you, a little thing? Search through other cities. Your beloved Bologna that you sigh for,[8] hospitable though she is to all who are of studious mind, has yet but one such person, though you seek in every corner and crevice. Verona has two; Solmona one; and Mantua one, if the heavens have not tempted him quite away from the things of earth, for he has left your banner and enlisted under that of Ptolemy. Rome herself, the capital of the world, has been drained of such citizens almost to a man, strange though it seems. Perugia did produce one, a man who might have made a name for himself; but he has neglected his opportunities, and turned his back not on Parnassus only but on our Apennines and Alps as well, and now, in old age, is leading a vagabond life, in Spain, toiling as a copyist to earn his daily bread. And other cities have given birth to others, but all of these whom I have known have before now left this mortal home and migrated to that continuing city which one day shall receive us all....

For a long while I have been talking to you just as if you were present; but now the strong illusion fades away, and I realise how far you are from me. There comes over me a fear that you will scarcely care, down in the shades, to read the many things that I have written here. Yet I remember that you wrote freely to me.

And now farewell, forever. To Orpheus, and Linus, and Euripides, and all the others, I beg you to give my kindest greetings, when you come again to your abode.

Written in the world above; in the _Midland_ between the famous rivers Po and Ticino and Adda and others, whence some say our _Milan_ derives its name; on the ninth day of October, in the year of this last age of the world the 1360th.

1: _Fam_., xxiv., 12.

2: Someone had sent Petrarch an epistle that purported to come from the shade of Homer. It must have been even more interesting than this reply, in its unconscious revelation of mediæval limitations. Petrarch took it very seriously. He often forgets in this answer that he is not writing to Homer himself.

3: In Petrarch's day, as has been hinted above (p. 237), [Petrarch laboured strenuously,...] there was no apparatus for the study of Greek. Oral instruction, from Greek or Byzantine scholars, was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was very difficult to secure, as Petrarch's repeated efforts and final failure prove. For his own statements concerning this subject see _Fam_., xviii., 2.

4: The reference is of course to the Latin translations of Homer, the _Odyssey_ of Livius Andronicus and the abridgment of the _Iliad_ mentioned just below, p. 254, note 1. (Your Penelope cannot have waited...)

5: Leo Pilatus (or Leontius Pilatus, as Boccaccio writes the name), a Calabrian, who, at the instance of Petrarch and Boccaccio, was making at Florence at about this time a Latin prose version of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. For a good brief account of what is known concerning Pilatus, with a few specimens of his translation, see Körting, _op. cit_., i., 474 _sqq_.

6: The reference here is to the metrical abridgment of the _Iliad_ by Silius Italicus. This contains 1070 lines, half of them condensed translation of passages from books I.-V., the remainder little more than the driest epitome. Poor as it is, it was widely accepted in the middle ages, in some confused sort of a way, as 'Homer.' But Petrarch was able to look below the surface and see just what it was.

7: De Nolhac has shown (_op. cit_., pp. 342, 354) that Pilatus probably had made for Petrarch alone, more than a year before this epistle was written, a preliminary translation of the first five books of the _Iliad._

8: Voigt argues from these words that the letter to which this of Petrarch's is a reply came from Bologna. De Nolhac thinks it more probable that it was written from Florence, by Boccaccio and his friends.

* * * * *

With this, as throwing further light upon Petrarch's limitations, may be placed the letter to his brother, upon the nature of poetry, to which reference was made above in discussing the question of allegory:

_On the Nature of Poetry._

_To his Brother Gherardo._[1]

I judge, from what I know of your religious fervour, that you will feel a sort of repugnance toward the poem which I enclose in this letter, deeming it quite out of harmony with all your professions, and in direct opposition to your whole mode of thinking and living. But you must not be too hasty in your conclusions. What can be more foolish than to pronounce an opinion upon a subject that you have not investigated? The fact is, poetry is very far from being opposed to theology. Does that surprise you? One may almost say that theology actually is poetry, poetry concerning God. To call Christ now a lion, now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I cannot attempt to enumerate them. What indeed are the parables of our Saviour, in the Gospels, but words whose sound is foreign to their sense, or allegories, to use the technical term? But allegory is the very warp and woof of all poetry. Of course, though, the subject matter in the two cases is very different. That everyone will admit. In the one case it is God and things pertaining to him that are treated, in the other mere gods and mortal men.

Now we can see how Aristotle came to say that the first theologians and the first poets were one and the same. The very name of poet is proof that he was right. Inquiries have been made into the origin of that word; and, although the theories have varied somewhat, the most reasonable view on the whole is this: that in early days, when men were rude and unformed, but full of a burning desire--which is part of our very nature--to know the truth, and especially to learn about God, they began to feel sure that there really is some higher power that controls our destinies, and to deem it fitting that homage should be paid to this power, with all manner of reverence beyond that which is ever shown to men, and also with an august ceremonial. Therefore, just as they planned for grand abodes, which they called temples, and for consecrated servants, to whom they gave the name of priests, and for magnificent statues, and vessels of gold, and marble tables, and purple vestments, they also determined, in order that this feeling of homage might not remain unexpressed, to strive to win the favour of the deity by lofty words, subjecting the powers above to the softening influences of songs of praise, sacred hymns remote from all the forms of speech that pertain to common usage and to the affairs of state, and embellished moreover by numbers, which add a charm and drive tedium away. It behoved of course that this be done not in every-day fashion, but in a manner artful and carefully elaborated and a little strange. Now speech which was thus heightened was called in Greek _poetices_; so, very naturally, those who used it came to be called _poets._

Who, you will ask, is my authority for this? But can you not dispense with bondsmen, my brother, and have a little faith in me? That you should trust my unsupported word, when I tell you things that are true and bear upon their face the stamp of truth, is nothing more, it seems to me, than I have a right to ask of you. Still, if you find yourself disposed to proceed more cautiously, I will give you bondsmen who are perfectly good, witnesses whom you may trust with perfect safety. The first of these is Marcus Varro, the greatest scholar that Rome ever produced, and the next is Tranquillus, an investigator whose work is characterised always by the utmost caution. Then I can add a third name, which will probably be better known to you, Isidore. He too mentions these matters, in the eighth book of his _Etymologies_, although briefly and merely on the authority of Tranquillus.

But you will object, and say, "I certainly can believe the saint, if not the other learned men; and yet the fact remains that the sweetness of your poetry is inconsistent with the severity of my life." Ah! but you are mistaken, my brother. Why, even the Old Testament fathers made use of poetry, both heroic song and other kinds: Moses, for example, and Job, and David, and Solomon, and Jeremiah. Even the psalms, which you are always singing, day and night, are in metre, in the Hebrew; so that I should be guilty of no inaccuracy or impropriety if I ventured to style their author the Christian's poet. Indeed the plain facts of the case inevitably suggest some such designation. Let me remind you, moreover, since you are not inclined to take anything that I say to-day without authority, that even Jerome took this view of the matter. Of course these sacred poems, these psalms, which sing of the blessed man, Christ,--of his birth, his death, his descent into hell, his resurrection, his ascent into heaven, his return to judge the earth,--never have been, and never could have been, translated into another language without some sacrifice of either the metre or the sense. So, as the choice had to be made, it has been the sense that has been considered. And yet some vestige of metrical law still survives, and the separate fragments we still call verses, very properly, for verses they are.

So much for the ancients. Now as regards Ambrose and Augustine and Jerome, our guides through the New Testament,--to show that they too employed poetic forms and rhythms would be the easiest of tasks; while in the case of Prudentius and Prosper and Sedulius and the rest the mere names are enough, for we have not a single word from them in prose, while their metrical productions are numerous and well known. Do not look askance then, dear brother, upon a practice which you see has been approved by saintly men whom Christ has loved. Consider the underlying meaning alone, and if that is sound and true accept it gladly, no matter what the outward form may be. To praise a feast set forth on earthen vessels but despise it when it is served on gold is too much like madness or hypocrisy....

But enough of preface, and of apology for form and style. Let me come to the point, without further explanation. You must know that three summers ago, when I was in Gaul, the heat drove me to the Fountain of the Sorgue, which we once fixed upon, you will remember, as the place where we would pass our life. By the grace of God, however, a far more safe and tranquil abode was being prepared for you; while I was to be denied the enjoyment of even the little tranquillity that would have been possible there, since fortune was planning to raise me to a much higher station, very little to my liking.

Well, here I was, with my mind divided, afraid to undertake a task of any magnitude while I was under such a burden of care, and yet quite unable to be altogether idle, because I have been nourished from my infancy on activity, an activity which I hope has been praiseworthy, but which I know has been incessant. So I chose a middle course, postponing all work that was of much importance but doing little odds and ends of writing, trifles that would help me pass away the time. Now the very nature of the region, the forest recesses to which the coming of dawn made me long to flee and forget my cares, and from which only the return of night could bring me home, suggested that I sing a woodland strain. Accordingly I began to compose a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, a thing that I had long had in mind; and you would scarcely believe me if I told you in how few days I had it all completed, under the stimulus of the place.

Now the first of these eclogues, in accordance with the intention that I had all along entertained, was about our two selves. Consequently it has won the distinction of being chosen to be sent to you; whether with the result of giving you pleasure or of completely spoiling all your pleasure I scarcely can decide. But that is neither here nor there. In either case this kind of poetry is one that cannot be understood unless a key to it is furnished by the person who constructed it. So, as I would not have you weary yourself to no purpose, I must give you a brief outline, first of what I say, then of what I mean by it.

Two shepherds are introduced, for it is of the pastoral style. Pastoral names are given them, naturally: Silvius and Monicus. Silvius, seeing Monicus lying all alone in a cave, happy and at his ease, envies him and speaks to him, expressing amazement at his good fortune, and lamenting his own estate. Monicus may forget his flocks and fields, and think of rest alone, while he must make his painful way over the rough hills. He marvels the more at this great difference in their lot from the fact that, as he expresses it, one and the same mother bore them both,--so that we may understand that they are brothers. Monicus, in response, throws all the blame for this hard life on Silvius himself, saying that he is under no constraint whatever, but is wandering of his own free will through the trackless forests and over the mountain summits. Silvius replies that there is a reason for these wanderings; the reason is love, nothing less than love of the Muse. To make this clear he begins a rather long story of two shepherds, who sing very sweetly. He tells how he heard one of them in his boyhood, and afterwards the other, and was so captivated by them that he began to neglect everything else. He has been following them eagerly through the mountains, and while doing so has learned to sing, with a skill that others have praised, although he himself is not yet satisfied with it; and he intends to struggle on toward the summit, and either reach it or perish in the attempt.

Monicus now begins to urge Silvius to come into the cave, for he will hear there even sweeter singing. Presently, though, he breaks off, suddenly, as if he saw signs of agitation in the other's face. Silvius, however, offers some excuse, and Monicus continues. When he has finished, Silvius asks who this shepherd is that sings so sweetly; never before has he heard him mentioned. Thereupon Monicus, in the roundabout way that would be natural in an artless shepherd, instead of giving his name describes the land of his birth, making mention, after the fashion of rustics, who often wander in telling a story, of two rivers that spring from one source. Then immediately, as if he saw that he had made a mistake, he turns his words round, and where he had begun to speak of two rivers he goes on to tell of one, which flows from two sources. Both of these are in Asia. Silvius declares that he knows this river, citing in confirmation the fact that a certain youth who goes clad in hairy raiment bathes Apollo in it. In that region, continues Monicus, a singer has arisen. Silvius, upon hearing these words, remembers that he has heard of this man, and proceeds to speak slightingly of his voice and mode of singing, exalting his own by comparison. But Monicus objects, and heaps upon the far-away singer well-deserved praise. Thereupon Silvius after a time pretends to acquiesce, and says that later he will return and test the sweetness of these songs; now he must hurry away. Monicus, wondering at this, begs to know the reason of his haste, and learns that Silvius is intent upon a song of his own which he has begun to compose, concerning a certain famous youth whose deeds he is briefly reviewing, and that he consequently has no leisure now for other things. Monicus accordingly brings the conversation to an end. He bids Silvius good-bye, concluding with an earnest exhortation to weigh well the dangers and chances of such delay. And there you have the sum and substance of the narrative.

Now as to its meaning. The shepherds who converse are ourselves. I am Silvius, you are Monicus. These names are chosen for the following reasons: the former, partly because the scene of the eclogue is of a sylvan character, partly because I always have felt, from my earliest childhood, a hatred of cities, implanted in me by nature, and a love of sylvan life, which has led many of our friends to style me Sylvanus much more frequently than Francesco. Then the other name comes from the fact that there was one of the Cyclops who was called Monicus, that is to say, one-eyed, and there seemed a certain fitness in applying the name to you, since of the two eyes which we mortals all use, one to behold heavenly things and the other those of the earth, you have cast away that which looks earthward and are content to employ the nobler one alone.

The cave, where Monicus dwells in solitude, is Montrieux, where you are living your life in the midst of grottoes and woods. Or it may be taken for the very cave of Mary Magdalene, close by your monastery, the place where she passed her period of penitence, and where God lent the props of his grace to your vacillating heart and made you steadfast in the holy purpose which you had so often discussed with me.

For flocks and fields, which you are said to care for no longer, understand your fellow-men and their haunts, which you abandoned when you fled away into solitude. The statement that we had one and the same mother, and father too for that matter, is not allegory but naked truth. The word sepulchre[2] is to be taken as referring to our final abode. The meaning is that heaven awaits you, but Tartarus me, unless divine mercy comes to my rescue. Or the sentence can be taken literally, just as it reads, for you have now a sure abode, and consequently a fairly sure hope of sepulture, while I am still wandering about at random, and everything in my future is quite unsure.

The inaccessible peak, which Monicus upbraids Silvius for struggling toward, panting and exhausted though he is, is the height of fame, the rarer sort of fame, which but few succeed in attaining to. The deserts where Silvius is said to wander are scholarly pursuits. These to-day are desert places indeed, being in some cases forsaken outright, through love of money, in others despaired of and neglected, in consequence of intellectual sluggishness. The mossy rocks are the rich and great, the moss being their inherited wealth, which has slowly gathered about them. Murmuring fountains can be used of men of letters and of those who have the gift of eloquence, inasmuch as little streams of intellectual influence flow from the well-springs of genius that are within them, with a sound, so to speak, that charms and delights us. As for Silvius' swearing by Pales, that is a shepherd oath, for Pales is the shepherds' goddess. We may understand there Mary, who is not a goddess, to be sure, but yet is the mother of God. Parthenias is Virgil himself. It is not a name of my devising. We read in his biography that he well deserved to be styled Parthenias, or the virgin; so his whole life showed. That the reader may be sure to understand this reference the place is added; the region, as I express it, where Benacus, a lake of Cisalpine Gaul, produces a son that closely resembles himself. This son is the Mincius, a river that we associate with Mantua, which is Virgil's native town.

On the other hand, the shepherd of noble blood who has been brought here from another land signifies Homer. In that passage almost every word has a meaning. Even the _inde_, which is put for _deinde,_ is used not without a certain mysteriousness, seeing that I came in contact with Virgil when I was a boy, but with Homer _afterwards_, when I was somewhat advanced in years....[3] The epithet _noble_ is of course Homer's by right, for what is more truly noble than his language or mind? Again, _I know not from what valley he has come_ was added because there are varying opinions as to the place of his birth, no one of which have I accepted in that place in the eclogue. Finally, that Virgil _drank at the Homeric spring_ is a fact which is known to everyone who has to do with poetry. The _mistress_ of whom they both are said to be worthy is Fame, for whose sakes they are poets. Except for their mistresses lovers would not sing. The _bristling forest_ and the _mountains that rise into the air_, at which Silvius is amazed because they do not follow after these sweet singers, are the uncultivated multitude and the persons who occupy high stations. The _descent from the mountain-tops_ to the bottom of the valleys, and the ascent from the valleys into the mountains again, which Silvius refers to in speaking of himself, are the transition from the heights of theory to the low and level ground of practice, and, conversely, the movement in the opposite direction, when our attitude changes. The _fountain_ which praises the singer is the chorus of scholars. The _dry and barren crags_ are the ignorant and illiterate, who, like the rocks where echo dwells, possess mere voice and power of agreement, without any power of discrimination. The _nymphs_, the goddesses of the fountains, are the divine minds of scholars. The _threshold_ over which Monicus invites Silvius to pass is that of the Carthusian order, into which assuredly no one has ever been lured by deception, or against his will, as many persons have been into other religious bodies. The _shepherd_ whose singing Monicus prefers to Homer and Virgil is no other than David. The mention of _singing to the psaltery_ is peculiarly appropriate in his case, because of the psalms, which are his work. _In the middle of the night_, on account of the singing of the psalms in your churches at early dawn. The _two rivers from a single source_, as Monicus puts it first by mistake, are the Tigris and the Euphrates, well-known streams of Armenia. Then the _single river from a double source_ is the Jordan, in Judæa. For this fact we have many authorities, among them Jerome, who was a diligent student of those regions and lived there for a long time. The names of the two sources are Jor and Dan. By their union both the stream and its name are formed. The Jordan empties, it is said, into the Sea of Sodom, where we are told that the fields are strewn with ashes from the burning of the cities. In this river Christ, we learn, was baptised by John. So the _hairy youth_ is John the Baptist, who was but a youth, virgin, pure, innocent, clad in hairy raiment, unkempt, wearing the skin of a goat, with locks uncombed, with face blackened by the suns. Then by _Apollo,_ whom I describe as son of Jupiter and god of intellect, I mean Christ, who is the son of God, and very God himself, and moreover, as I suggest, our god of intellect and wisdom. For, as all theologians know, among the attributes of the persons that constitute the Holy Trinity, one and indivisible, wisdom belongs to the Son; he is the wisdom of the Father.

Again, the _hoarse voice_ and _never-ceasing tears_ and _oft-repeated name of Jerusalem_ are intended as a reference to David, because of his style, which at first seems rough and full of lamentation, and furthermore because there really is frequent mention of that city in the psalms, sometimes historical, sometimes allegorical. Now there follows a brief enumeration of the subjects which the poets whom Silvius is striving to exalt are wont to sing. To explain all this would take a long time. Besides it is sufficiently clear already to those who are proficient in such matters. And then Monicus replies, excusing this harshness of David, and running with like brevity over the list of subjects which he has treated.

The youth about whose deeds Silvius has begun to weave his song is Scipio Africanus, who laid Polyphemus low upon the African shore. The reference there is to Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader. Hannibal and Polyphemus were both one-eyed, after Hannibal's loss of an eye in Italy. The _Libyan lions_, in which we know that Africa abounds, are the other Carthaginian leaders, who were hurled from power by the same conqueror. The _sacrifices_ that were consumed are the ships which he burned, the ships upon which all the hopes of the Carthaginians had hung. He destroyed five hundred of them before their very eyes, so Roman history tells us. The designation of _starry youth_ is partly because of the heroic valour which he possessed above all other men, and which Virgil characterises as 'burning,' Lucan as 'fiery'; and partly because the Romans of his day were led by their admiration of him to credit him with divine origin. The Italians are said to praise him _from the opposite shore_ because of the fact that the shore of Italy really was opposed to that of Africa, not alone in temper and feeling but in situation too. Rome itself is directly across from Carthage.

However, although this youth is praised so widely, nobody has sung of him; by which I meant to suggest that although all history is full of his deeds and his renown, and Ennius has written a great deal about him, in his rude and unpolished style, as Valerius calls it, there still is no carefully finished metrical treatment of his achievements as yet. So I decided long ago to sing of him myself, as best I could. My poem of _Africa_ is about him. I began it in my youth, with a high heart. God grant that I may be permitted in my old age to bring it to the happy conclusion which I then dreamed of. The danger which always inheres in such postponement of a well-considered plan, and the mutability and uncertainty of this life of ours, Monicus bids us ponder upon, in his concluding remarks, which scarcely call for further explanation. And you will also understand the few sentences at the close, if you will reflect a little. Farewell.

Written at Padua, on the second day of December, toward evening.

1: _Fam_., x., 4.

2: The fifth line of the eclogue reads:

Una fuit genetrix, at spes non una sepulchri.

[3] The reference here seems to be to lines 13 _sqq_. (Basle edition of the _Opera_, 1581.) Possibly _inde_ stood originally at the beginning of line 20, for _ecce_. There is much evidence, throughout the letter, to the effect that Petrarch either had before him a slightly different text from that known to us or merely reviewed the eclogue hastily and then trusted to his memory or impressions while writing.

* * * * *

This next letter gives one some notion of the difficulties of a scholar's life in Petrarch's day:

_On the Scarcity of Copyists._

_To Lapo da Castiglionchio._[1]

Your Cicero has been in my possession four years and more. There is a good reason, though, for so long a delay; namely, the great scarcity of copyists who understand such work. It is a state of affairs that has resulted in an incredible loss to scholarship. Books that by their nature are a little hard to understand are no longer multiplied, and have ceased to be generally intelligible, and so have sunk into utter neglect, and in the end have perished. This age of ours consequently has let fall, bit by bit, some of the richest and sweetest fruits that the tree of knowledge has yielded; has thrown away the results of the vigils and labours of the most illustrious men of genius, things of more value, I am almost tempted to say, than anything else in the whole world....

But I must return to your Cicero. I could not do without it, and the incompetence of the copyists would not let me possess it. What was left for me but to rely upon my own resources, and press these weary fingers and this worn and ragged pen into the service? The plan that I followed was this. I want you to know it, in case you should ever have to grapple with a similar task. Not a single word did I read except as I wrote. But how is that, I hear someone say; did you write without knowing what it was that you were writing? Ah! but from the very first it was enough for me to know that it was a work of Tullius, and an extremely rare one too. And then as soon as I was fairly started I found at every step so much sweetness and charm, and felt so strong a desire to advance, that the only difficulty which I experienced in reading and writing at the same time came from the fact that my pen could not cover the ground so rapidly as I wanted it to, whereas my expectation had been rather that it would outstrip my eyes, and that my ardour for writing would be chilled by the slowness of my reading. So the pen held back the eye, and the eye drove on the pen, and I covered page after page, delighting in my task, and committing many and many a passage to memory as I wrote. For just in proportion as the writing is slower than the reading does the passage make a deep impression and cling to the mind.

And yet I must confess that I did finally reach a point in my copying where I was overcome by weariness; not mental, for how unlikely that would be where Cicero was concerned, but the sort of fatigue that springs from excessive manual labour. I began to feel doubtful about this plan that I was following, and to regret having undertaken a task for which I had not been trained; when suddenly I came across a place where Cicero tells how he himself copied the orations of--someone or other; just who it was I do not know, but certainly no Tullius, for there is but one such man, one such voice, one such mind. These are his words: "You say that you have been in the habit of reading the orations of Cassius in your idle moments. But I," he jestingly adds, with his customary disregard of his adversary's feelings, "have made a practice of _copying_ them, so that I might _have_ no idle moments." As I read this passage I grew hot with shame, like a modest young soldier who hears the voice of his beloved leader rebuking him. I said to myself, "So Cicero copied orations that another wrote, and you are not ready to copy his? What ardour! what scholarly devotion! what reverence for a man of godlike genius!" These thoughts were a spur to me, and I pushed on, with all my doubts dispelled. If ever from my darkness there shall come a single ray that can enhance the splendour of the reputation which his heavenly eloquence has won for him, it will proceed in no slight measure from the fact that I was so captivated by his ineffable sweetness that I did a thing in itself most irksome with such delight and eagerness that I scarcely knew I was doing it at all.

So then at last your Cicero has the happiness of returning to you, bearing you my thanks. And yet he also stays, very willingly, with me; a dear friend, to whom I give the credit of being almost the only man of letters for whose sake I would go to the length of spending my time, when the difficulties of life are pressing on me so sharply and inexorably and the cares pertaining to my literary labours make the longest life seem far too short, in transcribing compositions not my own. I may have done such things in former days, when I thought myself rich in time, and had not learned how stealthily it slips away: but I now know that this is of all our riches the most uncertain and fleeting; the years are closing in upon me now, and there is no longer any room for deviation from the beaten path. I am forced to practice strict economy; I only hope that I have not begun too late. But Cicero! he assuredly is worthy of a part of even the little that I still have left. Farewell.

[1] _Fam_., xviii., 12.

* * * * *

The two letters that follow, and that conclude this chapter, are given as indicative of the various ways in which Petrarch brought his enthusiasm for the classics to bear upon his contemporaries. It was partly through such conscious effort, and partly through the general spirit and tone of all his letters, and of his other writings too, that he affected the thought of his time.

_Ignorance and Presumption Rebuked._

_To Giovanni Andrea di Bologna._[1]

I find it hard to tell you how much my ears, fatigued by the clamour of the multitude, have been refreshed by your letter, which I have read and re-read several times over. You thought it verbose, as I learned at the end; but I found nothing to criticise in it except its brevity. Your threat at the close, that in the future you will be more concise, I did not like. I should prefer to have you more detailed. But that shall be as you please; you are my master; it is not for you to think of my preferences, but for me to try to adapt myself to yours.

This, however, does not necessarily mean that the game is to be entirely in your hands. Things often turn out, as you very well know, quite differently from what we expect. It is possible that you may once in a while hear something from me that would force even the most devoted lover of silence to speak out. Do you want me to show you, here and now, that I can live up to that threat? Very well; I will do it. But first of all let me protest that I entertain the same opinion concerning you that Macrobius does of Aristotle; begotten perhaps by my love for you, perhaps by the truth,--I do not attempt to decide. I consider you scarcely capable of ignorance, upon any subject whatever. If anything. does escape you that seems contrary to fact, I conclude either that you have spoken a little hastily, or, as Macrobius says, that you were indulging in a playful jest. I am not thinking now of what you wrote concerning Jerome, that you place him above all the other fathers of the church. Your opinion upon that subject is of long standing and widely known, and not at all new to me. Although it really seems to me idle to contend thus from the comparative point of view about geniuses who are all superlative, still, on the other hand, you cannot be mistaken in what you say. Whatever wins your approval will be greatest and best. And yet I remember that I used to debate this matter a great deal with your friend of glorious memory, Giacomo, Bishop of Lombez, and that, while he followed in your footsteps and always and invariably preferred Jerome, I used to give the palm among all our Catholic writers to Augustine. And--well, I believe upon reflection that I will dismiss my fears of offending either the truth or your susceptibilities, my father, and say precisely what I think. There are many bright stars, of varying magnitude; one we may call Jupiter, another Arcturus, another Lucifer, but the great Sun of the Church is surely Augustine.

This, however, as I have implied, is a matter on which I am not disposed to lay much stress. Freedom of choice can harm no one; freedom of judgment must be respected. But the statement that follows, that among ethical writers you place Valerius highest, does amaze me; that is, if you were speaking seriously and will abide by what you say, and not jestingly, just for the sake of trying me. For if Valerius is first, where pray does Plato stand? and Aristotle? and Cicero? and Annæus Seneca, whom good judges have ranked as a moralist above them all? Perhaps Plato and Tullius will have to be dropped from my list, however, on grounds that you have stated elsewhere in your letter. For, to my great astonishment--I really cannot conceive what you were thinking of--you declare that they are poets, and ought to be admitted to the poetic choir! If your saying so should make it so, you would accomplish more than you imagine. Apollo would smile upon you and the Muses applaud, when they found you introducing your distinguished new denizens to the hills and groves of Parnassus.[2]

What in the world induced you to think or say such a thing, when it is so plain that Tullius in his early works is the greatest of orators, and in his later an eminent philosopher? Besides, while we feel everywhere that Virgil, for instance, is a poet, Tullius is nowhere so. What we read in the _Declamations_ is certainly true, that Virgil's felicity deserted him when he wrote in prose, and Cicero's eloquence when he wrote in verse. And then what am I to say of Plato, who by the consensus of all the greatest judges is not a poet at all, but the prince of philosophers? Turn to Cicero, to Augustine, to other writers who speak with authority, as many of them as you please, and you will find that wherever in their books they have exalted Aristotle above the rest of the philosophers they have always taken pains to declare that Plato is the one exception. What it is that makes Plato a poet I cannot imagine, unless it be a remark of Panætius, quoted by Tullius, where he is denominated the Homer of philosophy. This means nothing more than chief of philosophers; as preëminent among them as Homer among the poets. If we do not explain it so, what are we to say of Tullius himself, when in a certain passage in the letters to Atticus he calls Plato his God? They are both trying in every possible way to express their sense of the godlike nature of Plato's genius; hence the name of Homer, and, more explicit still, that of God.

Next, prompted by this reference to Cicero and Plato, you discourse--with wonderful eloquence and charm for one who is speaking about things that he does not understand--upon the poets in general, entering into an enthusiastic discussion of the identity of one and another of them, the time when they were born, the characteristics of their style, the particular kind of poetry that they affected, and their place upon the roll of fame. To review all this in detail would be too long a task,--so numerous are the things which none of us had ever heard of before, but you have now disclosed to such of us as are eager to learn, in this eloquent epistle. And yet on second thought, if you will concede to me, or rather not to me but to my calling, the right to offer just one objection, I shall express my wonder at finding the names of Nævius and Plautus so entirely unknown to you that you think me guilty of a solecism in inserting them in my letter, and reprove me indirectly for daring, as Flaccus puts it, to invent characters before unheard of. You do not make this charge in so many words, but your doubts are such and so stated as to amount to nothing less than a condemnation of my temerity in bringing upon the stage names that are strange and foreign. It is true, you did in the end curb your longing to speak plainly, and with your usual courtesy and modesty chose to blame rather your own ignorance. And yet, unless I am greatly mistaken, it is one of those cases where a man's words say one thing but his real convictions loudly proclaim another. I wonder at this, for Terence you seem to know very well, and he, at the very beginning of his works, in the prologue of the _Andria_, makes definite mention of Nævius and Plautus, and, in the same verse, of Ennius too. Then in the _Eunuchushe_ refers to them again, and in the _Adelphi_ speaks of Plautus alone. Cicero, too, mentions them together, in his _De Senectute_, and Aulus Gellius in his _Nodes Atticæ_, where he gives their epitaphs, in old-fashioned Latin. All this argument is needless, however, for who ever heard the name of poetry apart from the names of these two men? Your amazement therefore fills me with amaze; and I beg you, my father,--if you will let me speak freely,--not to allow these lucubrations of yours to pass into any hands but mine. The brighter one's renown, the more carefully should it be guarded. To me, indeed, you may say whatever you wish, as freely as to yourself. You may change and retract, as scholars have to do when they commune with their own past thoughts. But when your words have gone abroad all power of choice is taken away, and you must submit to whatever judgments the multitude may pronounce upon you. I send your letter back to you in safe custody, and send this with it, keeping a copy, though, simply that I may be able, if you should desire to continue the discussion, to place your arguments by the side of mine which called them forth, instead of having to tax my memory for what I had said....

In writing thus I do not for a moment forget that a letter of reproof addressed to a father by a son can scarcely fail to seem harsh and rude. But you must let my love for you excuse such boldness. My regard for your reputation compels me to speak, for if I keep silent you will be sure to hear these things from others, or, still worse, will be injured by severe judgments uttered behind your back....

Let me say, then, that I detect in your writings a constant effort to make a display. This, I take it, accounts for your tendency to roam through strange volumes, culling out fine passages to weave into your own discourses. Your pupils, amazed at such an array of names, applaud you and call you omniscient, just as if you really knew every author the titles of whose books your memory happens to retain. Scholars, however, find it easy to discriminate between a man's acquisitions and his borrowings; easy, too, to determine what portion of the latter he has a right to, what he holds by precarious tenure, and what he has simply stolen; when he has drunk deep, from a full fountain, and when he has taken only a hasty sip.

It is a childish thing to glory in a mere display of memory. As Seneca has said, it is unseemly for a grown man to go gathering nosegays; he should care for fruit rather than flowers. But you, in spite of your years and the venerableness that they have brought with them; in spite of the fact that you are of great eminence in your profession; indeed,--for this task of taking you down is a thankless one, and I am glad now and then to try smoothing you down instead,[3]--are the very first man of your time in the department of literature to which you have devoted yourself, nevertheless, like a truant child, break bounds, and go wandering away into fields where you do not belong, and spend the evening of your days in picking pretty flowers. You seem to take delight in exploring new regions, where the paths are unknown to you and you are sure to go astray once in a while or fall into a pit. You like to follow the example of those who parade their knowledge before their doors, like so much merchandise, while their houses within are empty. Ah! it is safer to be something than to be always trying to seem to be. Ostentation is difficult and dangerous. Moreover, just when you are most desirous of being deemed great, innumerable little things are sure to happen which not only reduce you to your true dimensions but bring you below them. No one intellect should ever strive for distinction in more than one pursuit. Those who boast of preëminence in many arts are either divinely endowed or utterly shameless or simply mad. Who ever heard of such presumption in olden times, on the part of either Greeks or men of our own race? It is a new practice, a new kind of effrontery. To-day men write up over their doors inscriptions full of vainglory, containing claims which, if true, would make them, as Pliny puts it, superior even to the law of the land. But when one looks within--ye gods! what emptiness is there!

So, in conclusion, I beg you, if my words have any weight, to be content within your own bounds. Do not imitate these men who are all promise and no performance; who, as the comic poet has said, know everything and yet know nothing. There is a certain wise old Greek proverb that bids everyone stick to the trade that he understands. Farewell.[4]

1: _Fam_., iv., 15. Giovanni Andrea(✝1348), whose lectures Petrarch had attended when at the University of Bologna, was renowned as an expert in the canon law; he was called "the Archdoctor of the Decretum," and held his chair in the University for no less than forty-five years. His extant writings do not exhibit the ignorance which Petrarch here exposes. He was perhaps, as Fracassetti suggests, _un poco più cauto e considerato_ in his books than in his lectures to his students and his letters to his friends. _Cf. Let. delle Cose Fam_., i., 568 _sqq_.

2: Petrarch not infrequently said sharp things, and said them well, as here. He is witty, too, at times. He often indulges, also, in a quiet jest or a bit of banter. He habitually takes the mellow tolerant view of harmless follies and foibles. But humour, pure and simple, of the highest type, the humour that is a deep and essential part of a man's nature, and that consequently is all-embracing and ever-present, he lacks. To this lack may be ascribed, in his life, the tendency to take himself at times somewhat too seriously; and, in his writings, the absence of that saving sense of 'the little more' and 'the little less' without which perfect proportion and perfect taste are well-nigh impossible in artistic productions.

3: The original demands some such forced play upon words: 'ut non semper pungam sed interdum ungam.'

4: The old jurist did not take this criticism kindly, but made an angry effort to justify himself; whereupon Petrarch wrote again, exposing his ignorance and childishness more savagely even than in this first epistle.

* * * * *

_The Young Humanist of Ravenna._

_To Boccaccio_[1]

A year after your departure I had the good fortune to secure the services of a fine, generous, young lad, whom I am sorry you do not know. He knows you well, for he has often seen you, at Venice, in your house,[2] where I am now living, and also at the home of our friend Donato, and on such occasions has observed you very carefully, as is natural at his age. I want you to know him, too, so far as that is possible at such long range, and to see him with the mind's eye, when you read my letters, and so I will tell you a little about him. He was born on the coast of the Adriatic, at about the time, if I am not mistaken, when you were living there,[3] with the former lord of that region, the grandfather of him who now holds sway. The lad's own family and fortune are humble. But he is well endowed, nevertheless. He has a force of character and a power of self-control that would be praiseworthy even in old age; and a mind that is keen and flexible; and a memory that is rapacious, and capacious, and, best of all, tenacious. My bucolics, which are divided off into twelve eclogues, as you know, he committed to memory within eleven days, reciting one section to me each evening and two the last time, repeating them without a single hitch, as if he had the book before his eyes. Besides that, he has himself a great deal of invention,--a rare thing in these days,--and a fine enthusiasm, and a heart that loves the Muses; and he is already, as Maro hath it, making new songs of his own; and if he lives, and his development keeps pace with his years, as I am confident it will, he surely will be something great, as was prophesied of Ambrose by his father. There is much to be said for him even now, at an age when usually there is very little to say. Of one of his good tendencies you have just heard. You shall hear now of another, a trait that constitutes the best possible foundation for sound character and solid intellectual attainments. As the common herd loves money and longs to possess it, even so, and more, does he hate it and spurn it. To 'add to golden numbers golden numbers' he considers labour worse than lost. He is scarcely willing to acquire the necessaries of life. In his love of solitude, his fasting, his vigils, he vies with me, often surpasses me. In brief, his character has so recommended him to me that he is every bit as dear to me as a son whom I had begotten; perhaps dearer, because a son--such alas! are the ways of our young men nowadays--would wish to rule, while all his study is to obey, to follow not his own inclinations but my will, and this not from any selfish motive, such as the hope of reward, but solely from love and, possibly, an expectation of being benefited by association with me....[4]

And now I come, at the close, to what really was first in my thoughts. The lad has a decided leaning toward poetry; and if he perseveres in his efforts, till in due time he learns to think clearly and vigorously, he will compel your wonder and your congratulations. But so far he is vague and uncertain, because of the feebleness of youth, and does not always know what he wants to say. What he does want to, however, he says very nobly and beautifully. So it frequently happens that there falls from him some poem that is not only pleasing to the ear but dignified and graceful and well-considered, the sort of work that you would ascribe, if you were ignorant of the author, to some writer of long experience. I am confident that he will develop vigour of thought and expression, and work out, as the result of his experiments, a style of his own, and learn to avoid imitation, or, better, to conceal it, so as to give the impression not of copying but rather of bringing to Italy from the writers of old something new. Now, however, imitation actually is his greatest joy, as is usual at his time of life. Sometimes his delight in another's genius seems to lend to his spirit wings, and he defies all the restraints of his art and soars aloft, so high that he cannot continue his flight as he should, and has to descend in a fashion that betrays him. The strongest of all these admirations is for Virgil. It is marvellously strong. He thinks very many of our poets worthy of praise, but Virgil worthy almost of worship. He loves him so, is so fascinated by him, that he often takes pains to weave bits from his poems into his own verse. I, rejoicing to find that he is overtaking me and longing to see him press on and become what I have always aspired to be, warn him, in a fatherly and friendly fashion, to consider carefully what he is about. An imitator must see to it that what he writes is similar, but not the very same; and the similarity, moreover, should be not like that of a painting or statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son to a father, where there is often great difference in the features and members, and yet after all there is a shadowy something,--akin to what our painters call one's _air_,--hovering about the face, and especially the eyes, out of which there grows a likeness that immediately, upon our beholding the child, calls the father up before us. If it were a matter of measurement every detail would be found to be different, and yet there certainly is some subtle presence there that has this effect.

In much the same way we writers, too, must see to it that along with the similarity there is a large measure of dissimilarity; and furthermore such likeness as there is must be elusive, something that it is impossible to seize except by a sort of still-hunt, a quality to be felt rather than defined. In brief, we may appropriate another's thought, and may even copy the very colours[5] of his style, but we must abstain from borrowing his actual words. The resemblance in the one case is hidden away below the surface; in the other it stares the reader in the face. The one kind of imitation makes poets; the other--apes. It may all be summed up by saying with Seneca, and with Flaccus before him, that we must write just as the bees make honey, not keeping the flowers but turning them into a sweetness of our own, blending many very different flavours into one, which shall be unlike them all, and better.

I often say such things, and he always listens as he would to his own father. It happened the other day, though, as I was advising him in this fashion, that he offered the following objection. "I see your meaning," he said, "and I admit the truth of all that you say. But the occasional, sparing, use of others' words,--that is a thing for which I have abundant warrant, in the practice of very many of our poets, and of yourself above all." I was amazed, and replied, "If ever you have found such things in my works, my son, you may be sure that it is due to some oversight, and is very far from being my deliberate intention. I know that cases of this sort, where a writer makes use of another's words, are to be found by the thousand in the poets; but I myself have always taken the utmost pains, when composing, to avoid every trace both of my own work and, more particularly, of my predecessors', difficult though such avoidance is. But where, pray, is this passage of mine, by which you justify yourself?" "In your bucolics, number six, where, not far from the end, there is a verse that concludes with these words: _atque intonat ore_." I was astounded; for I realised, as he spoke, what I had failed to see when writing, that this is the ending of one of Virgil's lines, in the sixth book of his divine poem. I determined to communicate the discovery to you; not that there is room any longer for correction, the poem being well known by this time and scattered far and wide, but that you might upbraid yourself for having left it to another to point out this slip of mine; or, if it has chanced to escape your own notice so far, that you might learn of it now, and at the same time might be led to reflect on the fact that we mortals, all of us,--not I alone, who with all my zeal and industry am handicapped by insufficiency of talent and literary training, but all other men as well, however great their learning and their abilities,--are so limited in our powers that all our inventions have some element of incompleteness, perfection being the prerogative of him alone from whom proceeds the little that we know and are able to do. Then, in conclusion, I want you to join me in praying Virgil to pardon me, and not harden his heart against me for unwittingly borrowing--not stealing--these few words from him,--who himself has stolen outright, many and many a time, from Homer, and Ennius, and Lucretius, and many another poet. Farewell.

PAVIA, Oct. 28, [1365].

1: _Fam_., xxiii., 19

2: The reader must not be led by this _facon de parler_ to infer that the impecunious Boccaccio owned a mansion in Venice. Petrarch was fond of speaking of his own possessions as belonging to his friends; he refers here to the house furnished him by the Venetian government in exchange for his library. Boccaccio had visited him there, in the summer of 1363, some two years before this letter was written.--For the discussions to which the description of this brilliant youth have given rise the reader is referred to Fracassetti's long note, _Let. delle Cose Fam_., v., 91 _sqq_.

3: At Ravenna.

4: For the passage here omitted see p. 150 _sq_. above. (But should I ever find a resting place...)

5: A metaphor of which Petrarch is fond. Usually his employment of it can be traced directly to Cicero and Quintilian, but now and then it occurs in a passage that seems to tell of his own keen delight in the sensuous side of language; as in _Fam_., viii., 7, where he says to 'Socrates': 'Ubi ... dulciter intermicantes colores rhetoricos quærebamus, nil nisi dolentis interjectiones ... aspicimus.' This quotation, and the entire letter above, concerning the young Humanist, are but two among very many indications, scattered through the whole correspondence, that Petrarch had thought long and carefully about literary art, and had formulated to himself all of its principles, down to the very least. His judgment and feeling concerning literature were unerring, except when he was led astray by his allegorising tendency and by a mediæval fondness for senseless plays upon words. Yet outside of his own art he seems to have been decidedly crude æsthetically, as has been the case with many another great man of letters, before and since.

IV

TRAVELS

Ulysseos errores erroribus meis confer: profecto si nominis et rerum claritas una foret, nec diutius erravit ille, nec latius.--_Præfatio._

The Italians were probably the first among modern peoples to discover the outer world to be something beautiful in itself. "Would that you could know," Petrarch writes to a friend, "with what delight I wander, free and alone, among the mountains, forests, and streams." He spent many years, as we have seen, in his simple rustic home at Vaucluse, and throughout his life he was in the habit of retiring now and then to the seclusion of the country. In no way did his tastes more nearly approach our modern predilections than in his love of nature and his passion for travel.

He was once invited to accompany a friend upon a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but he discreetly refused the invitation; not that he feared the perils of the deep, but he could not overcome his horror of sea-sickness, which he had several times experienced upon the Mediterranean. Instead of joining his friend, he prepared a little guide-book[1] for him, which might serve to call his attention to the noteworthy objects upon the long journey from Genoa to Jerusalem. It is significant that Petrarch deals principally in his little manual not with the half-legendary attractions of the Orient, but with the familiar beauties of their own Italy. He does not forget, at the very opening of the journey, the lovely valleys of the Riviera, with their tumbling brooks, and the pleasing contrast of wildness and verdure on the hills to the east of Genoa. But, like a true lover of nature, he felt himself powerless adequately to describe the scene, and contented himself with commending to his friend's admiration the beauties which no mortal pen could depict.[2] The four letters which follow have been chosen with the aim of illustrating Petrarch's attitude toward the world about him.

1: _Itinerarium Syriacum, Opera_, pp. 556 _sqq_.

2: "Quæ multo facilius tibi sit mirari quam cuiquam hominum stylo amplecti." _Itinerarium Syriacum, Opera_, p. 557.

_An Excursion to Paris, the Netherlands, and the Rhine._

_To Cardinal Giovanni Colonna._[1]

I have lately been travelling through France, not on business, as you know, but simply from a youthful curiosity to see the country. I finally penetrated into Germany, to the banks of the Rhine itself. I have carefully noted the customs of the people, and have been much interested in observing the characteristics of a country hitherto unknown to me, and in comparing the things I saw with those at home. While I found much to admire in both countries, I in no way regretted my Italian origin. Indeed, the more I travel, the more my admiration for Italy grows. If Plato, as he himself says, thanked the immortal gods, among other things, for making him a Greek and not a barbarian, why should not we too thank the Lord for the land of our birth, unless to be born a Greek be considered more noble than to be born an Italian. This, however, would be to assert that the slave was above his master. No Greekling, however shameless, would dare to make such a claim, if he but recollected that long before Rome was founded and had by superior strength established her sway, long before the world yet knew of the Romans, "men of the toga, lords of the earth," a beggarly fourth part of Italy, a region desert and uninhabited, was nevertheless styled by its Greek colonists "Greater Greece." If that scanty area could then be called great, how very great, how immense, must the Roman power have seemed after Corinth had fallen, after Ætolia had been devastated and Argos, Mycenæ, and other cities had been taken, after the Macedonian kings had been captured, Pyrrhus vanquished, and Thermopylæ a second time drenched with Asiatic blood! Certainly no one can deny that it is a trifle more distinguished to be an Italian than a Greek. This, however, is a matter which we may perhaps take up elsewhere.

To revert to my travels in France,--I visited the capital of the kingdom, Paris, which claims Julius Cæsar as its founder. I must have felt much the same upon entering the town as did Apuleius when he wandered about Hypata in Thessaly. I spent no little time there, in open-mouthed wonder; and I was so full of interest and eagerness to know the truth about what I had heard of the place that when daylight failed me I even prolonged my investigations into the night. After loitering about for a long time, gaping at the sights, I at last satisfied myself that I had discovered the point where truth left off and fiction began. But it is a long story, and not suited for a letter, and I must wait until I see you and can rehearse my experiences at length.

To pass over the intervening events, I also visited Ghent, which proudly claims the same illustrious founder as Paris, and I saw something of the people of Flanders and Brabant, who devote themselves to preparing and weaving wool. I also visited Liège, which is noted for its clergy, and Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles's capital, where in a marble church I saw the tomb of that great prince, which is very properly an object of veneration to the barbarian nations....[2]

I did not leave Aix-la-Chapelle until I had bathed in the waters, which are warm like those at Baiæ. It is from them that the town is said to derive its name.[3] I then proceeded to Cologne, which lies on the left bank of the Rhine, and is noted for its situation, its river, and its inhabitants. I was astonished to find such a degree of culture in a barbarous land. The appearance of the city, the dignity of the men, the attractiveness of the women, all surprised me. The day of my arrival happened to be the feast of St. John the Baptist. It was nearly sunset when I reached the city. On the advice of the friends whom my reputation, rather than any true merit, had won for me even there, I allowed myself to be led immediately from the inn to the river, to witness a curious sight. And I was not disappointed, for I found the river-bank lined with a multitude of remarkably comely women. Ye gods, what faces and forms! And how well attired! One whose heart was not already occupied might well have met his fate here.

I took my stand upon a little rise of ground where I could easily follow what was going on. There was a dense mass of people, but no disorder of any kind. They knelt down in quick succession on the bank, half hidden by the fragrant grass, and turning up their sleeves above the elbow they bathed their hands and white arms in the eddying stream. As they talked together, with an indescribably soft foreign murmur, I felt that I had never better appreciated Cicero's remark, which, like the old proverb, reminds us that we are all deaf and dumb when we have to do with an unknown tongue. I, however, had the aid of kind interpreters, for--and this was not the least surprising thing I noted there--these skies, too, give nurture to Pierian spirits. So when Juvenal wonders that

Fluent Gaul has taught the British advocate,[4]

let him marvel, too, that

Learned Germany many a clear-voiced bard sustained.

But, lest you should be misled by my words, I hasten to add that there are no Virgils here, although many Ovids,[5] so that you would say that the latter author was justified in his reliance upon his genius or the affection of posterity, when he placed at the end of his _Metamorphoses_ that audacious prophecy where he ventures to claim that as far as the power of Rome shall extend,--nay, as far as the very name of Roman shall penetrate in a conquered world,--so widely shall his works be read by enthusiastic admirers.

When anything was to be heard or said I had to rely upon my companions to furnish both ears and tongue. Not understanding the scene, and being deeply interested in it, I asked an explanation from one of my friends, employing the Virgilian lines:

... What means the crowded shore? What seek these eager spirits?[6]

He told me that this was an old custom among the people, and that the lower classes, especially the women, have the greatest confidence that the threatening calamities of the coming year can be washed away by bathing on this day in the river, and a happier fate be so assured. Consequently this annual ablution has always been conscientiously performed, and always will be. I smiled at this explanation, and replied, "Those who dwell by Father Rhine are fortunate indeed if he washes their misfortunes away with him; I fear that neither Po nor Tiber could ever free us of ours. You send your ills to the Britons, by the river; we would gladly ship ours off to the Africans or Illyrians." But I was given to understand that our rivers were too sluggish. There was a great laugh over this, and then, as it was getting late, we left the spot and returned home.

During the few days following I wandered about the city, under the guidance of my friends, from morning until night. I enjoyed these rambles not so much for what I actually saw as on account of the reminiscences of our ancestors, who have left such extraordinary monuments to the Roman power in this far-distant country. Marcus Agrippa came, perhaps, most prominently before me. He was the founder of this colony, to which, in preference to all his other great works whether at home or abroad, he gave his own name. He was a great builder as well as a distinguished warrior. His fame was such that he was chosen by Augustus as the most desirable son-in-law in the world. His wife, whatever else we may say of her, was at least a remarkable woman, the Emperor's only child and very dear to him. I beheld the bodies of the thousands of holy virgins who had suffered together, and the ground dedicated to these noble relics--ground which they say will of its own accord reject an unworthy corpse. I beheld the Capitol, which is an imitation of ours. But in place of our senate, meeting to consider the exigencies of peace and war, here one finds beautiful boys and girls ever lifting up together their harmonious voices in nightly hymns of praise to God. There one might hear the rattle of arms, the rolling chariots and the groans of captives; but here are peace and happiness and the voice of mirth. There it was the warrior who made his triumphal entry; here it is the Prince of Peace.

I saw, too, the great church in the very centre of the town. It is very beautiful, although still uncompleted, and is not unjustly regarded by the inhabitants as the finest building of its kind in the world. I looked with reverence upon the relics of the Three Kings, who, as we read, came once upon a time, bringing presents, to worship at the feet of a Heavenly King as he lay wailing in the manger. Their bodies were brought from the East to the West in three great leaps.[7]

You may perhaps think, noble father, that I have gone too far just here, and dwelt upon unimportant details. I readily admit it, but it is because I have nothing more at heart than to obey your commands. Among the many instructions which you gave me, as I was leaving, the last one was that I should write to you as fully about the countries I visited and the various things I saw and heard as I should tell about them, were we face to face. I was not to spare the pen, nor to strive for elegance or terseness of expression. Everything was to be included, not simply the more picturesque incidents. In Cicero's words, you told me to write "whatever might come into the cheek." I promised to do this, and from the numerous letters which I have despatched on the way it would seem that I had kept my engagement. If you had desired me to treat of higher things I should have done what I could; but it seems to me in the present case that the object of my letter should be rather to instruct the reader than to give consequence to the writer. If you and I wish to appear before the public we can do so in books, but in our letters let us just talk with one another.

But to continue, I left Cologne June 30, in such heat and dust that I sighed for Virgil's "Alpine snows and the rigours of the Rhine." I next passed through the Forest of Ardennes, alone, and, as you will be surprised to hear, in time of war. But God, it is said, grants especial protection to the unwary. I had long known something of this region from books; it seemed to me a very wild and dismal place indeed. However, I will not undertake with my pen a journey which I have but just completed with my horse. After many wanderings I reached Lyons to-day. It, too, is a noble Roman colony, a little older even than Cologne. From this point two well known rivers flow together into our ocean,--the Rhone here joining the Arar, or, as the inhabitants now call it, the Saône. But I need not tell you more about them, for they are hurrying on, one led by the other, down to Avignon, where the Roman pontiff detains you and the whole human race.

This morning when I arrived here I ran across one of your servants by accident, and plied him, as those newly arrived from foreign parts are wont to do, with a thousand questions. He knew nothing, however, except that your noble brother, whom I was hastening to join, had gone on to Rome without me. On hearing this my anxiety to proceed suddenly abated. It is now my purpose to wait here until the heat too shall abate somewhat, and until I regain my vigour by a little rest. I had not realised that I had suffered from either source until I met your servant; no kind of weariness indeed is so keenly felt as that of the mind. If the journey promises to seem tedious to me I shall float down the Rhone. In the meantime I am glad to know that your faithful servant will see that this reaches you, and that you will know where I am. As for your brother, who was to be my guide, and who now (my disappointment must be my excuse for saying it) has deserted me, I feel that my expostulations must be addressed to him directly. I beg that you will see that the enclosed message[8] reaches him as soon as may be. Farewell. Remember your friend.

LYONS, August 9.

1: _Fam_., i., 3, 4. The two letters in which Petrarch describes his journey to the north are here given together. The first is dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, June 21 [1333], and the second from Lyons, August 9, of the same year.

2: This first letter closes here with a legend of Charles the Great which Petrarch heard at Aix-la-Chapelle.

3: _I.e._, Aquisgrana.

4: _Sat_., xv., 111.

5: The context would seem to indicate (as Fracassetti and de Nolhac [_op. cit._, p. 148] assume) that Petrarch means that many copies of Ovid but none of Virgil were to be found at Cologne.

6: _Æneid_, vi., 318 _sq._

7: Namely, to Constantinople, then to Milan, and finally to Cologne.

8: This letter to the Bishop of Lombez is preserved, and is to be found next in order in Fracassetti's collection. _Fam_., i., 5.

* * * * *

A good deal has been written about Petrarch's famous ascent of Mount Ventoux. Körting assuredly exaggerates its significance when he declares it "an epoch-making deed" which would by itself substantiate Petrarch's title to be called the first modern man.[1] The reader will observe that, however modern may have been the spirit in which the excursion was undertaken, the relapse into mediæval sentiment was speedy and complete. As we shall find, Petrarch had no sooner reached the top than he bethought himself of his Augustine, before whose stern dictum the wide landscape quickly lost its fascination.

* * * * *

_The Ascent of Mount Ventoux._

_To Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro._[2]

To-day I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum.[3] My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years; for, as you know, I have lived in this region from infancy, having been cast here by that fate which determines the affairs of men. Consequently the mountain, which is visible from a great distance, was ever before my eyes, and I conceived the plan of some time doing what I have at last accomplished to-day. The idea took hold upon me with especial force when, in re-reading Livy's _History of Rome_, yesterday, I happened upon the place where Philip of Macedon, the same who waged war against the Romans, ascended Mount Hæmus in Thessaly, from whose summit he was able, it is said, to see two seas, the Adriatic and the Euxine. Whether this be true or false I have not been able to determine, for the mountain is too far away, and writers disagree. Pomponius Mela, the cosmographer--not to mention others who have spoken of this occurrence--admits its truth without hesitation; Titus Livius, on the other hand, considers it false. I, assuredly, should not have left the question long in doubt, had that mountain been as easy to explore as this one. Let us leave this matter one side, however, and return to my mountain here,--it seems to me that a young man in private life may well be excused for attempting what an aged king could undertake without arousing criticism.

When I came to look about for a companion I found, strangely enough, that hardly one among my friends seemed suitable, so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics, even among those who are dearest to us. This one was too apathetic, that one over-anxious; this one too slow, that one too hasty; one was too sad, another over-cheerful; one more simple, another more sagacious, than I desired. I feared this one's taciturnity and that one's loquacity. The heavy deliberation of some repelled me as much as the lean incapacity of others. I rejected those who were likely to irritate me by a cold want of interest, as well as those who might weary me by their excessive enthusiasm. Such defects, however grave, could be borne with at home, for charity suffereth all things, and friendship accepts any burden; but it is quite otherwise on a journey, where every weakness becomes much more serious. So, as I was bent upon pleasure and anxious that my enjoyment should be unalloyed, I looked about me with unusual care, balanced against one another the various characteristics of my friends, and without committing any breach of friendship I silently condemned every trait which might prove disagreeable on the way. And--would you believe it?--I finally turned homeward for aid, and proposed the ascent to my only brother, who is younger than I, and with whom you are well acquainted. He was delighted and gratified beyond measure by the thought of holding the place of a friend as well as of a brother.

At the time fixed we left the house, and by evening reached Malaucène, which lies at the foot of the mountain, to the north. Having rested there a day, we finally made the ascent this morning, with no companions except two servants; and a most difficult task it was. The mountain is a very steep and almost inaccessible mass of stony soil. But, as the poet has well said, "Remorseless toil conquers all." It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the advantages of vigour of mind and strength and agility of body, and everything else essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no other difficulties to face than those of the region itself. We found an old shepherd in one of the mountain dales, who tried, at great length, to dissuade us from the ascent, saying that some fifty years before he had, in the same ardour of youth, reached the summit, but had gotten for his pains nothing except fatigue and regret, and clothes and body torn by the rocks and briars. No one, so far as he or his companions knew, had ever tried the ascent before or after him. But his counsels increased rather than diminished our desire to proceed, since youth is suspicious of warnings. So the old man, finding that his efforts were in vain, went a little way with us, and pointed out a rough path among the rocks, uttering many admonitions, which he continued to send after us even after we had left him behind. Surrendering to him all such garments or other possessions as might prove burdensome to us, we made ready for the ascent, and started off at a good pace. But, as usually happens, fatigue quickly followed upon our excessive exertion, and we soon came to a halt at the top of a certain cliff. Upon starting on again we went more slowly, and I especially advanced along the rocky way with a more deliberate step. While my brother chose a direct path straight up the ridge, I weakly took an easier one which really descended. When I was called back, and the right road was shown me, I replied that I hoped to find a better way round on the other side, and that I did not mind going farther if the path were only less steep. This was just an excuse for my laziness; and when the others had already reached a considerable height I was still wandering in the valleys. I had failed to find an easier path, and had only increased the distance and difficulty of the ascent. At last I became disgusted with the intricate way I had chosen, and resolved to ascend without more ado. When I reached my brother, who, while waiting for me, had had ample opportunity for rest, I was tired and irritated. We walked along together for a time, but hardly had we passed the first spur when I forgot about the circuitous route which I had just tried, and took a lower one again. Once more I followed an easy, roundabout path through winding valleys, only to find myself soon in my old difficulty. I was simply trying to avoid the exertion of the ascent; but no human ingenuity can alter the nature of things, or cause anything to reach a height by going down. Suffice it to say that, much to my vexation and my brother's amusement, I made this same mistake three times or more during a few hours.

After being frequently misled in this way, I finally sat down in a valley and transferred my winged thoughts from things corporeal to the immaterial, addressing myself as follows:--"What thou hast repeatedly experienced to-day in the ascent of this mountain, happens to thee, as to many, in the journey toward the blessed life. But this is not so readily perceived by men, since the motions of the body are obvious and external while those of the soul are invisible and hidden. Yes, the life which we call blessed is to be sought for on a high eminence, and strait is the way that leads to it. Many, also, are the hills that lie between, and we must ascend, by a glorious stairway, from strength to strength. At the top is at once the end of our struggles and the goal for which we are bound. All wish to reach this goal, but, as Ovid says, 'To wish is little; we must long with the utmost eagerness to gain our end.' Thou certainly dost ardently desire, as well as simply wish, unless thou deceivest thyself in this matter, as in so many others. What, then, doth hold thee back? Nothing, assuredly, except that thou wouldst take a path which seems, at first thought, more easy, leading through low and worldly pleasures. But nevertheless in the end, after long wanderings, thou must perforce either climb the steeper path, under the burden of tasks foolishly deferred, to its blessed culmination, or lie down in the valley of thy sins, and (I shudder to think of it!), if the shadow of death overtake thee, spend an eternal night amid constant torments." These thoughts stimulated both body and mind in a wonderful degree for facing the difficulties which yet remained. Oh, that I might traverse in spirit that other road for which I long day and night, even as to-day I overcame material obstacles by my bodily exertions! And I know not why it should not be far easier, since the swift immortal soul can reach its goal in the twinkling of an eye, without passing through space, while my progress to-day was necessarily slow, dependent as I was upon a failing body weighed down by heavy members.

One peak of the mountain, the highest of all, the country people call "Sonny," why, I do not know, unless by antiphrasis, as I have sometimes suspected in other instances; for the peak in question would seem to be the father of all the surrounding ones. On its top is a little level place, and here we could at last rest our tired bodies.

Now, my father, since you have followed the thoughts that spurred me on in my ascent, listen to the rest of the story, and devote one hour, I pray you, to reviewing the experiences of my entire day. At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes toward Italy, whither my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance; the very same Alps through which that fierce enemy of the Roman name once made his way, bursting the rocks, if we may believe the report, by the application of vinegar. I sighed, I must confess, for the skies of Italy, which I beheld rather with my mind than with my eyes. An inexpressible longing came over me to see once more my friend and my country. At the same time I reproached myself for this double weakness, springing, as it did, from a soul not yet steeled to manly resistance. And yet there were excuses for both of these cravings, and a number of distinguished writers might be summoned to support me.

Then a new idea took possession of me, and I shifted my thoughts to a consideration of time rather than place. "To-day it is ten years since, having completed thy youthful studies, thou didst leave Bologna. Eternal God! In the name of immutable wisdom, think what alterations in thy character this intervening period has beheld! I pass over a thousand instances. I am not yet in a safe harbour where I can calmly recall past storms. The time may come when I can review in due order all the experiences of the past, saying with St. Augustine, 'I desire to recall my foul actions and the carnal corruption of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may the more love thee, O my God.' Much that is doubtful and evil still clings to me, but what I once loved, that I love no longer. And yet what am I saying? I still love it, but with shame, but with heaviness of heart. Now, at last, I have confessed the truth. So it is. I love, but love what I would not love, what I would that I might hate. Though loath to do so, though constrained, though sad and sorrowing, still I do love, and I feel in my miserable self the truth of the well known words, 'I will hate if I can; if not, I will love against my will.' Three years have not yet passed since that perverse and wicked passion[4] which had a firm grasp upon me and held undisputed sway in my heart began to discover a rebellious opponent, who was unwilling longer to yield obedience. These two adversaries have joined in close combat for the supremacy, and for a long time now a harassing and doubtful war has been waged in the field of my thoughts."

Thus I turned over the last ten years in my mind, and then, fixing my anxious gaze on the future, I asked myself, "If, perchance, thou shouldst prolong this uncertain life of thine for yet two lustres, and shouldst make an advance toward virtue proportionate to the distance to which thou hast departed from thine original infatuation during the past two years, since the new longing first encountered the old, couldst thou, on reaching thy fortieth year, face death, if not with complete assurance, at least with hopefulness, calmly dismissing from thy thoughts the residuum of life as it faded into old age?"

These and similar reflections occurred to me, my father. I rejoiced in my progress, mourned my weaknesses, and commiserated the universal instability of human conduct. I had well-nigh forgotten where I was and our object in coming; but at last I dismissed my anxieties, which were better suited to other surroundings, and resolved to look about me and see what we had come to see. The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of the mountain were already warning us that the time was near at hand when we must go. As if suddenly wakened from sleep, I turned about and gazed toward the west. I was unable to discern the summits of the Pyrenees, which form the barrier between France and Spain; not because of any intervening obstacle that I know of but owing simply to the insufficiency of our mortal vision. But I could see with the utmost clearness, off to the right, the mountains of the region about Lyons, and to the left the bay of Marseilles and the waters that lash the shores of Aigues Mortes, altho' all these places were so distant that it would require a journey of several days to reach them. Under our very eyes flowed the Rhone.

While I was thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now raising my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augustine's _Confessions_, a gift that I owe to your love, and that I always have about me, in memory of both the author and the giver. I opened the compact little volume, small indeed in size, but of infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever came to hand, for I could happen upon nothing that would be otherwise than edifying and devout. Now it chanced that the tenth book presented itself. My brother, waiting to hear something of St. Augustine's from my lips, stood attentively by. I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: "And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." I was abashed, and, asking my brother (who was anxious to hear more), not to annoy me, I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again. Those words had given me occupation enough, for I could not believe that it was by a mere accident that I happened upon them. What I had there read I believed to be addressed to me and to no other, remembering that St. Augustine had once suspected the same thing in his own case, when, on opening the book of the Apostle, as he himself tells us, the first words that he saw there were, "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantoness, not in strife and envying. But put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."

The same thing happened earlier to St. Anthony, when he was listening to the Gospel where it is written, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." Believing this scripture to have been read for his especial benefit, as his biographer Athanasius says, he guided himself by its aid to the Kingdom of Heaven. And as Anthony on hearing these words waited for nothing more, and as Augustine upon reading the Apostle's admonition sought no farther, so I concluded my reading in the few words which I have given. I thought in silence of the lack of good counsel in us mortals, who neglect what is noblest in ourselves, scatter our energies in all directions, and waste ourselves in a vain show, because we look about us for what is to be found only within. I wondered at the natural nobility of our soul, save when it debases itself of its own free will, and deserts its original estate, turning what God has given it for its honour into dishonour. How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain, which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation,--when it is not immersed in the foul mire of earth? With every downward step I asked myself this: If we are ready to endure so much sweat and labour in order that we may bring our bodies a little nearer heaven, how can a soul struggling toward God, up the steeps of human pride and human destiny, fear any cross or prison or sting of fortune? How few, I thought, but are diverted from their path by the fear of difficulties or the love of ease! How happy the lot of those few, if any such there be! It is of them, assuredly, that the poet was thinking, when he wrote:

Happy the man who is skilled to understand Nature's hid causes; who beneath his feet All terrors casts, and death's relentless doom, And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.[5]

How earnestly should we strive, not to stand on mountain-tops, but to trample beneath us those appetites which spring from earthly impulses.[6]

With no consciousness of the difficulties of the way, amidst these preoccupations which I have so frankly revealed, we came, long after dark, but with the full moon lending us its friendly light, to the little inn which we had left that morning before dawn. The time during which the servants have been occupied in preparing our supper, I have spent in a secluded part of the house, hurriedly jotting down these experiences on the spur of the moment, lest, in case my task were postponed, my mood should change on leaving the place, and so my interest in writing flag.

You will see, my dearest father, that I wish nothing to be concealed from you, for I am careful to describe to you not only my life in general but even my individual reflections. And I beseech you, in turn, to pray that these vague and wandering thoughts of mine may some time become firmly fixed, and, after having been vainly tossed about from one interest to another, may direct themselves at last toward the single, true, certain, and everlasting good.

MALAUCÈNE, April 26.

1: _Op. cit_., p. 105.

2: _Fam_., iv., 1. This letter, written when Petrarch was about thirty-two years old, is addressed to an Augustinian monk, professor of divinity and philosophy in the University of Paris, which drew several of its most famous teachers from Italy. It was probably in Paris, during the journey described above, that Petrarch first met him. The poet, we may infer from the present letter, made him his spiritual confidant, confessed to him his sinful love for Laura, whom he had first met six years before, and received from the monk, in addition to the natural spiritual counsels, a copy of St. Augustine's _Confessions_, to which he refers below. Dionysius was called in 1339 to Naples, and proved an agreeable companion for the sage ruler of that kingdom, not only on account of his distinguished moral and intellectual qualities, but by reason of his proficiency in the theory and practice of astrology, in which Robert took a profound interest. This branch of his knowledge is--to the surprise of one familiar with his views--sympathetically dwelt upon by Petrarch, in a poetic epistle (i., 13) addressed to Robert on the death of their common friend in 1342. Petrarch nevertheless often fiercely attacks the astrological arts, and is distinguished in this respect from even the most enlightened men of his time, including Boccaccio. _Cf._ Fracassetti, _Let. delle Cose Fam_., i., p. 425.

3: That is, Windy.

4: This is a reference, we may assume, to his love for Laura. See the note at the opening of this letter.

5: _Georgics_, ii., 490 _sqq_. The version here given is based upon that of Rhoades.

6: It is but fair to the translators to note that Petrarch's style is at its worst when he falls into a train of moralising.

* * * * *

_THE CHARMS OF PAVIA._

_To Boccacio._[1]

You have done well to visit me by letter, since you either would not or could not come to see me in person. On hearing that you had crossed the Alps to see the Babylon of the West, worse than the ancient city of that name because nearer to us, I was in a constant state of anxiety until I learned of your safe return. For I well know the difficulties of the route, having traversed it frequently, and I thought, too, of your heaviness of body, and of your seriousness of mind, so favourable to scholarly leisure and so averse to the responsibilities which you had assumed. Worried by these considerations, I enjoyed no peace, day or night, and I thank God that you are back safe and sound. The greater the perils of the sea that you have escaped, the greater is my gratitude for your return.

But, unless you were in a very great hurry, it would have been very easy for you, on reaching Genoa, to have turned this way. It would have required but two days to come to see me--whom indeed you see always and wherever you go,--and you would also have seen this city of Ticinum, on the banks of the Ticino, which I believe you have never visited. It is now called Pavia, which the grammarians tell us means admirable, or wonderful. It was long the celebrated capital of the Lombards. Still earlier than their time I find that Cæsar Augustus took up his quarters here, on the eve of the German war. I suppose he wished to be nearer the scene of action. He had sent his step-son on into Germany; where he was performing the most glorious deeds of prowess. From here Augustus could observe the campaign as from a watch-tower, stimulating the leader, and ready, should one of the reverses so common in war occur, to bring to his succour all the imperial forces, as well as the majesty of his own name.

You would have seen where the Carthaginian leader gained his first victory over our generals, in a conflict during which the Roman commander was snatched from the enemy's weapons and saved from imminent death by his son, scarcely more than a boy,--a striking presage that the lad would himself one day become a great leader. You would have seen where St. Augustine is buried, and where Boethius found a fitting place of exile in which to spend his old age and to die. They now repose together in two urns, under the same roof with King Luitprand, who transferred the body of St. Augustine[2] from Sardinia to this city. This is indeed a pious and devout concourse of illustrious men. One might think that Boethius followed in the footsteps of St. Augustine, during his life, by his spirit and writings, especially those on the Trinity,[3] which he composed after the example of Augustine, and in death, because his remains share the same tomb. You would wish that your mortal remains might have been destined to lie near such good and learned men. Finally, you would have seen a city famous in the mouths of men for its age. It is true that no reference to it occurs, so far as I can recollect, earlier than the period of the second Punic war, of which I just spoke. Indeed, if my memory does not play me false, even in connection with that period Livy only mentions the river and not the town. However, the similarity of the names--the river, _Ticinus_, and the town, _Ticinum_--might easily lead to the confusion of one with the other.[4]

But I will leave one side all such doubtful matters and confine myself to what is certain. You would find the air of the place very salubrious. I have now spent three summers here, and I do not remember to have experienced ever anywhere else such frequent and plentiful showers with so little thunder and lightning, such freedom from heat, and such steady, refreshing breezes. You would find the city beautifully situated. The Ligurians, of old a notable race and to this day a very powerful people, occupy the greater part of northern Italy, and the city lies in the midst of their territory. Commandingly situated on a slight elevation, and on the margin of gently sloping banks, it raises its crown of towers into the clouds, and enjoys a wide and free prospect on all sides, one which, so far as I know, is not exceeded in extent or beauty by that of any town which lies thus in a plain. By turning one's head ever so little one can see in one direction the snowy crest of the Alps, and in the other the wooded Apennines. The Ticino itself, descending in graceful curves and hastening to join the Po, flows close by the walls, and, as it is written, makes glad the city by its swift waters. Its two banks are joined by as fine a bridge as you would wish to see. It is the clearest of streams, both in reputation and in fact, and flows very rapidly, although just here, as if tired after its long journey and perturbed by the neighbourhood of a more famous river, it moves more deliberately, and has been deprived of some of its natural purity by the brooks which join it. It is, in short, very much like my Transalpine Sorgue, save that the Ticino is larger, while the Sorgue, on account of the nearness of its source, is cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

You would see, also, one of those works in which you have such an interest, and in which I, too, take the greatest delight,--an equestrian statue in gilded bronze. It stands in the middle of the market-place, and seems to be just on the point of reaching, with a spirited bound, the summit of an eminence. The figure is said to have been carried off from your dear people of Ravenna. Those best trained in sculpture and painting declare it to be second to none.

Lastly, in order of time, though not of importance, you would see the huge palace, situated on the highest point of the city; an admirable building, which cost a vast amount. It was built by the princely Galeazzo, the younger of the Visconti,[5] the rulers of Milan, Pavia, and many neighbouring towns, a man who surpasses others in many ways, and in the magnificence of his buildings fairly excels himself. I am convinced, unless I be misled by my partiality for the founder, that, with your good taste in such matters, you would declare this to be the most noble production of modern art.

So if you had come you would not only have seen your friend, which I hope, and indeed know, would have been most agreeable to you, but you would have been delighted also by the spectacle, not, as Virgil says, of wonderful little things, but of a multitude of great and glorious objects. I must confess that in my own case these objects are a source of supreme pleasure, and would keep me here, were it not that other interests call me away. I leave here shortly, but very gladly return to pass the summer months--if fate grant me more summer months....[6]

1: _Sen_., v., 1, written probably in 1365, the year in which Boccaccio undertook the embassy to Avignon to which Petrarch refers below.

2: It was the body not of Augustine but of Boethius which was transferred from Sardinia. See Rashdall's _Hist. of the Universities_, i., 34, n. 1.

3: Boethius was probably not a Christian, although he was until recent times regarded almost as one of the Church Fathers. It is hardly necessary to say that the theological works attributed to him are by some other hand.

4: This is an interesting illustration of Petrarch's careful reading of the classics. He evinces a modern conscientiousness in examining the evidences of the city's age.

5: Galeazzo's rule was divided with his elder brother Bernabo.

6: The description of Pavia closes here.

V

POLITICAL OPINIONS

RIENZO AND CHARLES IV

Principum ac regum familiaritatibus et nobilium amicitiis usque ad invidiam fortunatus fui.... Maximi regum meæ ætatis amarunt et coluerunt me; cur autem nescio; ipsi viderint: et ita cum quibusdam fui, ut ipsi quodam modo mecum essent, et eminentiæ eorum nullum tædium, commoda multa perceperim.

_Epistola ad Posteros._

Petrarch exhibits in his letters a deep and constant interest in public affairs, albeit, like others of his time, he views political problems somewhat broadly, with a generous disregard not only of technical detail but of human nature itself. He tells us that his intercourse with kings and princes and his friendship with noble personages was such as to excite envy in the less fortunate. His international fame, seconded by his own tastes and ambition, brought him into intimate association during a great part of his life with the potentates of his day, not only of Italy but of France and Germany,--even with the Emperor of the East. While he did not actually participate in the government, even during his stay at Milan, we find him sent upon important public missions. He prepared and delivered political addresses, and wrote letters to rulers and public men, with a hope of influencing their policy; he composed a considerable treatise upon the art of government;[1] he even participated, as a consulting expert, in drafting a constitution for the city of Rome.

Petrarch's interest in political reform is doubtless attributable in no small part to the patriotic enthusiasm aroused by the study of his nation's glorious past. Romans were to him but earlier Italians. Scipio Africanus was a national hero; Virgil, the great national poet; the Cæsars, the Italian rulers of the world. On visiting Cologne nothing so fascinated him as the vestiges of his forefathers. Moreover, he had ever before him in his fellow-countryman, Cicero, a literary spirit and philosopher like himself, who had not hesitated to devote his energies to public affairs.

The history of Italy under the rule of their Roman ancestors took on a celestial radiance in the eyes of those who viewed the sad decline of their country's greatness. Petrarch would, he says, have preferred any age to his own. His sole consolation lay in the rooted conviction that times were going rapidly from bad to worse. He saw upon every hand examples of the terrible inadequacy of the existing system to yield even the most primitive benefit of government,--the reasonable security of person and property. Disorder, robbery, and murder were every-day occurrences. When he first visited Rome, his friends deemed a hundred horsemen a necessary escort to protect him from the Orsini on his way to the city.[2] Upon the occasion of his coronation the representative of the King of Naples, who was to accompany him, failed to reach Rome; he had been captured by bandits.[3] Petrarch himself was attacked as he left the city, and was obliged to return within its walls.[4] The danger upon the highroads kept him in a constant state of apprehension when he or his friends undertook a journey. Even the peaceful retreat at Vaucluse was at last plundered and burned, and the poet declared that nowhere was one any longer sheltered from the ferocious robber bands which moved about with the precision of regular armies, and which the walls of fortified towns and the arms of their rulers were alike powerless to check.[5]

This lawlessness was naturally attributed to Italian disunion. The subdivision of Italy into a multitude of practically independent states and urban communities stimulated the development of personal political ambition and produced the "age of despots." The tyrants, in their struggle to maintain their power at home and increase their prestige abroad, inevitably resorted to the approved expedient of the usurper, territorial aggrandisement. The discomfiture or subjugation of their neighbours became the absorbing object of the foreign policy of Milan, Venice, and Florence, and of the lesser states as well. Peace, the natural enemy of the usurper, was thoroughly banished from Italy, and a perpetual state of war prevailed. There were few serious, decisive conflicts, it is true, but there was an all-pervading, self-perpetuating, Ishmaelitish antagonism between the various countries, which precluded all hope of national cooperation. "Servile Italy," indeed, "ship without a pilot!"[6]

In the face of such evils, and hopeless of reform from within, a patriotic Italian of the fourteenth century might be pardoned for looking to a foreign ruler, even to a somewhat commonplace and unpromising prince, for the initiative in restoring order. The Italians were too completely engrossed by their own complex interstate relations, and too thoroughly convinced of the absolute inferiority of "the barbarians," seriously to apprehend that foreign intervention might ultimately develop into subjugation. History was, indeed, quite explicit upon this point. The German emperors had never been able to establish their control over Italy except partially and for the moment.

Practical considerations were not, however, the most fundamental justification and explanation of the Ghibelline reliance upon foreign intervention. The political speculation of the time shows clearly that theory was much more potent than the obvious necessity of governmental reform in fostering the imperial cause. The theory in question was that of the perpetuity of the Holy Roman Empire, with its divinely recognised centre at Rome. Even at the courts of the despots, whose practical sagacity was creating the first modern states with their elaborate systems of administration, Petrarch, like Dante, loved to brood, with a half-mystical, half-humanistic partiality, upon that perdurable illusion which exercised such an inexplicable charm over the mediæval mind. It was the same craving for an ideal union of humanity under one consecrated head that led Dante joyfully to hail the coming of Henry VII. In the same great cause,--the defence of the Empire,--Marsiglio of Padua, by far the keenest of the political thinkers of Petrarch's time, composed his extraordinary treatise upon government and the relations of church and state. Longing for the restoration of Rome's supremacy, Petrarch first placed his hopes in Rienzo, and then, after the Tribune's fall, sent message after message to Charles IV., King of Bohemia, the grandson of Dante's imperial hero, exhorting him to have pity upon Italy and widowed Rome.

Mr. Bryce calls Dante's treatise on government an epitaph, not a prophecy. Petrarch, too, was blind to the forces about him which made for political progress. He learned nothing from that race of really great rulers, the Visconti, with whom he was intimately associated. Moreover, the most original and profound work upon government which the Middle Ages produced, the _Defensor Pacis_ of Marsiglio of Padua, written in 1324, appears to have exercised no influence upon him, and although he confined his reading to the classics and the writings of the Fathers, his political sympathies and ideals are typically mediæval. In his treatment of these matters he does not rise above the current argumentation of the Imperialists, although he re-enforces his position with a greater abundance and precision of historical illustration.

* * * * *

Rienzo had found in Petrarch a sympathetic confidant when, as early as 1343, upon visiting Avignon, he had unfolded his audacious schemes to him.[7] When, four years later, at Pentecost, 1347, the innkeeper's son carried out his successful _coup d'état_ and got possession of the city of Rome, Petrarch was enchanted, as is shown by the letter given below. The immediate results of Rienzo's accession to power were indeed almost magical: order was restored, the roads were rendered safe for the first time in the memory of man, and an Italian parliament was summoned to consider the unification of Italy. The Tribune's manifestoes aroused universal enthusiasm; and, in spite of the writer's inflated and obscure style, Petrarch pronounced him, long after the spell was broken, a most eloquent and persuasive orator and a graceful writer. Petrarch seemed to see his own dreams realised; the ancient dignity and ascendancy of Rome were re-established; the foreign tyrants, as he called the Roman nobility, including the Colonnesi, had been expelled; the power was once more in the hands of the divinely elected people of Rome. Rome was soon to be the head of a unified and rejuvenated Italy, perhaps of a redeemed Europe. By November Petrarch was on his way to join Rienzo. He was probably actuated to some extent, however, by his desire to see Italy once more, and to escape from the reproaches of his former friends at the papal court, especially of Giovanni Colonna, whose favour he necessarily sacrificed by his public espousal of Rienzo's cause. But upon his reaching Genoa, letters forwarded to him from Avignon brought the sad story of the Tribune's fatal indiscretions. He thereupon gave up the idea of going to Rome, and contented himself with addressing a sharp reprimand to the delinquent ruler, to whom he recalled the truth: _Magnus enim labor est magnæ custodia famæ_.[8]

After scarcely seven months of power Rienzo ignominiously retired from the Capitol and fled to the solitudes of the Abruzzi. There, while living the life of a hermit, he was encouraged by prophetic revelations to renew his attempts to establish the Roman power. He determined to conciliate the new Emperor, Charles IV., foreigner as he was, and win him if possible to his fantastic[9] schemes. This strangest of all Italian ambassadors must have reached Prague when Charles was fresh from a perusal of Petrarch's first summons to him, which is given below.[10] The Emperor listened curiously to Rienzo's representations, but instead of joining him in a campaign for the realisation of the ideal Roman Empire he shut up the ex-Tribune as an enemy of the Church, and later turned him over to the pope at Avignon. Petrarch still sympathised with the unfortunate captive, and prepared an appeal to the Roman people in his favour.[11] After a brief return to a restricted exercise of power as senator under the papal control, Rienzo was killed by a mob, October 8, 1354.[12]

1: _Sen_., xiv., i. Printed as a separate tractate in the Basle editions, under the title _De republica optime administranda. Opera_, pp. 372 _sqq_.

2: _Fam_., ii., 13 (vol. i., p. 133).

3: _Ep. Poet. Lat_., ii., 1.

4: _Fam_., iv., 8 (vol. i., p. 219).

5: _Cf. Sen_., x., 2 (_Opera_, pp. 870-872), where Petrarch describes the sad change of times since his student days. The mercenary bands (_grandes compagnies_) who wandered into Italy from France were doubtless a prime cause of the poet's gloomy views.

6: _Purgatorio_, vi.

7: Petrarch's letter "to a Friend" (_Ep. sine Titulo_, vii.; also _apud_ Fracassetti, _App. Lit_., No. 2) was doubtless addressed to Rienzo in 1343, and expresses the enthusiasm which he felt upon first meeting him.

8: _Fam_., vii., 7.

9: _Fantastic_ is the adjective applied to Rienzo, even by contemporaries. Giovanni Villani (xii., 90) says that the more thoughtful judged that "la dita impreso del tribuno era un opera _fantastica_ e da poco durare." The author of the _Vita di Cola di Rienzo_ refers to his _fantastic_ smile.

10: See pp. 361 _sqq_. (To Charles IV., Emperor August...)

11: Given below, pp. 348 _sqq_. (To the Roman People, urging...)

12: The chief source for the life of Rienzo is the _Vita di Cola di Rienzo_ by an unknown author (_apud_ Muratori's _Antiquitates_, and in a modern edition, Florence, 1854). Gregorovius gives a charming account of Cola in the sixth volume of his _Geschichte der Stadt Rom._

* * * * *

Petrarch's letters to Rienzo do not simply show an absorbing interest in the attempt of a national leader to restore the ancient prestige of Rome and to establish the unity of Italy; they seem to prove that there was a fundamental congruity, a spiritual affinity--_Wahlverwandtschaft_[1]--between the two men, which would have made them firm friends had they been brought together. One,[2] at least, of the eight letters of Petrarch to Rienzo which have been preserved is strikingly free from constraint, and would lead us to believe that the poet, on his part, was anxious that their relations should be those of cordial familiarity. The letter which follows gives us some notion of the widespread interest aroused by the Tribune's first acts.

_To Cola di Rienzo, Tribune of the Roman People._[3]

I shall continue to write to you every day, not from any hope of a reply,--for, in view of your heavy and varied cares, I must admit that while I long for an answer I can hardly expect one,--but rather that you may be the first to learn what goes on in my mind respecting you, and especially that I may in this way assure you of my deep concern for your welfare. I clearly perceive, in the first place, that you are set on a high pinnacle, exposed to the gaze, the judgment, and the comments not only of the Italians but of the whole human race; not only of those who are now alive but of those who shall be born in all the centuries to come. I realise, too, that you have assumed a heavy but a splendid and honourable responsibility, and undertaken a task at once glorious and unique. Never will our own generation, never will posterity, as I believe, cease to think of you. The speech of other men is as idle and discordant as their fleeting whims, but your purpose, no whit less firm than the Capitoline rock upon which you dwell, is one not to be shaken by every breath.

I know not whether you are aware of one thing, or, if so, whether you have given it any thought. You must not imagine that your letters which have hitherto reached us have remained in the hands of those to whom they were addressed. They are promptly copied by everybody with such eagerness, and circulated about the papal corridors with such interest that one would suppose that they came from a celestial being, or a dweller at the antipodes, rather than from one of our own race. At the rumour of a letter from you the whole populace gathers. Never was an utterance of the Delphic Apollo interpreted in so many senses as your words. I cannot but extol your circumspection in maintaining a tone at once so temperate and so free from offence, and I pray most fervently that you will henceforth take greater and greater precautions in this respect. Your words reflect the noble spirit of the writer and the majesty of the Roman people, without derogating in any way from the reverence and honour due to the Roman pontiff. It beseems your wisdom and eloquence to be able so to associate things which appear, but are not in reality, contradictory, that each is given its due weight.[4] I have noted how astonished some have been that the conflict in your letters between modesty and assurance resulted in so equal a contest and so doubtful a victory, for neither cowardly fear nor swelling pride showed themselves in the arena. Men hesitate, I observe, whether to admire most your deeds or your words, since all admit that for your devotion to liberty they may well declare you a Brutus, and for your eloquence, a Cicero,--whom Catullus of Verona calls "most fluent."

Continue, then, as you have begun. Write not only as if everyone were to see your letters, but as if they were to be sent forth from all our shores, and transmitted to every land. You have laid the firmest of foundations, in peace, truth, justice, and liberty; build upon these; for what you raise thereon shall be established, and he who runs upon them shall be dashed to pieces. He who opposes truth shall prove himself a liar; he who opposes peace, a turbulent spirit; he who opposes justice is himself unjust, and he who opposes liberty, arrogant and shameless.

I approve of your custom of keeping copies of all the letters which you send to various parts of the globe, for these copies are useful in determining what you should say by what you have already said, and they enable you, when it is necessary, to compare the letters of others with your own. That you do this is proved to me by the manner in which you dated your letter. Your magnificent subscription, moreover, "in the first year of the Republic's freedom," smacks of the intent to begin our annals anew. The expression delights and comforts me. And since you are wholly engaged in action, and until you discover a genius equal to the affair, I tender you, unless God ...,[5] my little skill and this pen of mine, as Livy says, to uphold the memory of the people who rule the earth; nor will my _Africa_ disdain to give place a little. Farewell.

1: _Cf_. Voigt, _op. cit_., i., p. 52.

2: _Var_., 47.

3: _Var_., 38. Written in 1347.

4: Rienzo found it impossible in the long run to reconcile his assumption of power with the prerogatives of Rome's papal sovereign.

5: A word is apparently missing here in the MS.

* * * * *

The following letter, written some five years after Rienzo's _coup d'état_, is not only important for its references to the ex-Tribune's reception at Avignon, but it enables us to judge how the whole affair appeared to Petrarch after his friend's disgrace.

_Rienzo under the Protection of the Muses._

_To Francesco Nelli._[1]

What do you expect me to tell you now?--something more of the episode in my last letter, which may equally well have brought indignant tears to your eyes or made you laugh?[2] At this moment I certainly have nothing more important on hand, although there are plenty of trifling duties. Indeed, lack of time prevents my turning to more weighty matters, and even what little time I have is not really free, but is filled with astonishing interruptions. I am in a constant hubbub, always in motion, running here, there, and nowhere.[3] This is an ill that is all too familiar to those who move from place to place. Having left Babylon[4] for the last time, I am now at the Fountain of the Sorgue, my usual port of refuge from the storms that overtake me. Here I am waiting for travelling companions, as well as for late autumn, or at least for that season when, as Virgil hath it, "the shortening days bring a waning heat." In the meantime, that my country life may not be wholly profitless, I am gathering together the results of past meditation. Every day I try either to make some progress in the more important writings which I have in hand or to finish outright some one little thing. This letter will show you what I am doing to-day.

Poetry, a divine gift which belongs of necessity to the few, is now beginning to be usurped, not to say profaned and degraded, by the many. To me there is nothing more irritating than this, and if I know your disposition, my friend, you will find it no less hard than I to reconcile yourself to this unbecoming state of affairs. Never at Athens or Rome, never in the times of Homer or Virgil, was there such an ado about poets as we have now on the banks of the Rhone; although I believe there was never a place or a time when the knowledge of these matters was at so low an ebb. But I would have you smother your irritation in a laugh, and learn to jest even in the midst of sadness.

Cola di Rienzo has recently come, or rather been brought, a prisoner, to the papal curia. He who was once the Tribune of the city of Rome, inspiring terror far and wide, is now the most miserable of men, and, what is worst of all, I fear that, miserable as he undoubtedly is, he ought scarcely to arouse our pity, since he who might have died with glory upon the Capitol has submitted to be imprisoned, first by a Bohemian and then by a native of Limoges,[5] thus bringing derision upon himself and upon the Roman name and state. How active my pen was in praising and admonishing this man is perhaps better known than I should wish. I was enamoured of his virtue; I applauded his design, and admired his spirit; I congratulated Italy, and anticipated a restoration of dominion to the mother city, and peace for the whole world. I could not disguise the joy that such hopes engendered, and it seemed to me that I should become a participant in all this glory if I could but urge him on in his course. That he keenly felt the incentive of my words his letters and messages amply testified. This aroused me the more, and incited me to discover what would serve to inflame further his fervid spirit; and, as I well knew that nothing causes a generous heart to glow like praise and renown, I disseminated enthusiastic eulogies, which may have seemed exaggerated to some, but which were in my opinion perfectly justified. I commended his past actions, and exhorted him to persevere in the future. Some of my letters to him are still preserved, and I am not altogether ashamed of them. I am not addicted to prophecy; would that he, too, had refrained from it! Moreover, at the time when I wrote, what he had done and what he seemed about to do was worthy not only of my admiration but of that of the whole human race. I doubt whether these letters should be destroyed for the single reason that he preferred to live a coward rather than die with dignity. But it is useless to discuss the impossible; however anxious I might be to destroy them I cannot, for they are now in the hands of the public, and so have escaped from my control.

But to return to our subject. He who had filled evil-doers throughout the world with trembling apprehension, and the good with glad hope and anticipation, approached the papal court humbled and despised. He who had once been attended by the whole Roman people and the chiefs of the Italian cities was now accompanied by two guards only, one on either side, as he made his unhappy way through the people, who crowded about him in their eagerness to see the face of one of whom they had only heard the proud name....[6] In this plight, as I understand from the letters of friends, one hope is left him; a rumour has spread among the people that he is an illustrious poet. It seems to them a shameful thing that one devoted to so sacred a pursuit should suffer violence. The elevated sentiment that now prevails with the crowd is the same to which Cicero once appealed before the magistrates, in favour of his teacher, Aulus Licinius Archias. But I need not add a description of the oration, which I formerly fetched from farthest Germany when travelling through that region as an eager sight-seer in my early days. During the year following my return, in response to the desires of your friends, I sent it to our native city. That you have it and have read it carefully I can see from the letters which reach me from there. But what shall I say of Rienzo's affair? I am delighted, and rejoice more than words can tell, that such honour is now rendered to the Muses, and--what is the more astonishing--by those who are unacquainted with them; so that they are able to save by their name alone a man otherwise hateful even to his very judges. What more exalted prerogatives could they have enjoyed under Augustus Cæsar, at a time when they were held in supreme honour, when poets came from all parts to look upon the illustrious countenance of that unique prince who was at once their friend and the ruler of the earth? What greater tribute, I ask, could be paid to the power of the Muses than that they should be permitted to snatch from death's door a man certainly detested,--with how much reason I will not discuss,--a convicted and confessed criminal (even if not guilty of the offence of which he is accused), about to be condemned by the unanimous vote of his judges to capital punishment. I am delighted, again I say it; I congratulate both him and the Muses,--him upon the protection he enjoys, them upon the honour in which they are held. Nor do I grudge an offender, reduced to his last hope and in such critical circumstances, this saving title of poet.

Yet if you asked my opinion I should say that Cola di Rienzo is very eloquent, possessed of great powers of persuasion, and ready of speech; as a writer also he is charming and elegant, his diction, if not very copious, is graceful and brilliant. I believe, too, that he reads all the poets that are generally known; but he is not a poet for all that, any more than one is a weaver who dons a garment made by another's hands. Even the writing of verses does not suffice by itself to earn the title of poet. As Horace most truly says,

'T is not enough then merely to inclose Plain sense in numbers,--which if you transpose, The words were such as any man might say.[7]

But this man has never composed a single poem which has reached my ears, nor has he applied himself to such things; and without application nothing, however easy, can be well done.

I wished to tell you all this in order that you first might be moved by the fate of one who was once a public benefactor, and then might rejoice in his unexpected deliverance. You will, like me, be equally amused and disgusted by the cause of his escape, and will wonder, if Cola--which God grant!--can, in such imminent peril, find shelter beneath the ægis of the poet, why Virgil should not escape in the same way? Yet he would certainly have perished at the hands of the same judges, because he is held to be not a poet but a magician. But I will tell you something which will amuse you still more. I myself, than whom no one has ever been more hostile to divination and magic, have occasionally been pronounced a magician by quite as acute judges, on account of my fondness for Virgil. How low indeed have our studies sunk![8]...

1: _Fam_., xiii., 6. This letter was probably written in 1352.

2: This refers to an account of the refusal to grant Petrarch a papal secretaryship because of his too elegant Latin. See above, p. 118.

3: The Latin--Nam et ego totus in motu, et multa circumstrepunt, simulque hic et alibi, atque ita nusquam, sum--forcibly expresses what is often supposed to be a quite modern experience.

4: _I.e._ Avignon.

5: Namely, by Emperor Charles IV. and Pope Clement VI. _Cf._ Papencordt, _Rienzi_, 254, n. 1.

6: In the portion of the letter here omitted Petrarch laments Rienzo's inconstancy and want of insight, and dwells upon the fact that he is accused not of having deserted a noble cause but of having dared to contemplate a free republic. The same sentiments are expressed in the letter which follows this.

7: Howes' version of _Sat_., i., 4, 42.

8: The letter closes with a last illustration of the prevailing ignorance. A highly talented and well-educated man (vir litterarum multarum et excelsi ingenii) of Avignon gravely asked Petrarch if a certain person, who could make a public speech and write a letter with some ease, might not properly be called a _poet_.

* * * * *

The treatment of Rienzo by the papal officials at Avignon seemed to Petrarch an insult to the Roman people; and he determined, shortly after the prisoner's arrival, to appeal to those who had once shared in the Tribune's fleeting glory. Petrarch's interest in the case may very well be ascribed, in part at least, to his former friendship for Rienzo; his letter is, however, chiefly important as illustrating his political ideas and his highly fantastic conception of the Roman Empire.

_To the Roman People, urging them to Intervene in Rienzo's Trial._[1]

Invincible people, to whom I belong, Conquerors of the Nations! there is a grave question which I would discuss with you, briefly and in confidence. I pray you therefore, I conjure you, illustrious men, to grant me your attention, for yours are the interests at stake. It is a serious matter, a most serious matter, with which none other in the world can be compared. But lest I should exhaust your interest by delay, or seem to endeavour to give added weight to a matter that by its very nature is of supreme importance, I will omit any introduction and come at once to the point.

Your former Tribune is now a captive in the power of strangers, and--sad spectacle indeed!--like a nocturnal thief or a traitor to his country, he pleads his cause in chains. He is refused the opportunity of a legitimate defence by the highest of earthly tribunals. The magistrates of justice themselves reject the claims of justice, and deny him what has never been denied to even the most impious offenders.[2] It is true that he may perhaps deserve to suffer in this manner, for, after he had planted the Republic by his skill, with his own hands so to speak, after it had taken root and flowered, in the very bloom of glorious success he left it. But Rome assuredly does not merit such treatment. Her citizens, who were formerly inviolable by law and exempt from punishment, are now indiscriminately maltreated, as anyone's savage caprice may dictate, and this is done not only without the guilt that attaches to a crime, but even with the high praise of virtue.

But that you may not be ignorant, most illustrious sirs, why he who was formerly your head and guide and is still your fellow-citizen--or shall I say your exile?--is thus persecuted, I must dwell upon a circumstance of which you may already be aware, but which is none the less astounding and intolerable. He is accused not of betraying but of defending liberty; he is guilty not of surrendering but of holding the Capitol. The supreme crime with which he is charged, and which merits expiation on the scaffold, is that he dared affirm that the Roman Empire is still at Rome, and in possession of the Roman people. Oh impious age! Oh preposterous jealousy, malevolence unprecedented! What doest thou, O Christ, ineffable and incorruptible judge of all? Where are thine eyes with which thou art wont to scatter the clouds of human misery? Why dost thou turn them away? Why dost thou not, with thy forked lightning, put an end to this unholy trial? Even though we be not deserving, look upon us, have pity upon us! Behold our enemies (who are not less thine), for they are multiplied, and they hate us even as they hate thee, with a cruel hate. Judge, we beseech thee, between our cause and theirs, unlike in every respect. From thy mouth let our judgment go forth; let thine eyes behold equity.

That one nation, or indeed that all nations, as we perceive, should have desired to withdraw themselves from that easiest and most just of all yokes, the yoke of Rome, need not surprise nor anger us, since there is in the souls of all mortals an innate love of liberty. Inadvisable and premature this desire may often be, and those whom shame forbids to obey their superiors ofttimes command but ill, and might better have submitted to be led. In this way all things are thrown into a state of turmoil and confusion; and in place of a suitable dominion we not infrequently find an unworthy subjection; instead of a dignified subordination, an unjust authority. Were this otherwise, human affairs would be upon a better footing, and the world, its head erect, would be vigorous still.

If this cannot be accepted upon my authority, experience may be trusted. When have we seen such peace, such tranquillity, such justice, such glory of well-doing, such rewards for virtue, such punishments for evil,--when did such order reign in all things, as when the world had but a single head, and that head Rome? It was that time which God, who loves peace and justice, chose above all others to humble himself to be born of the Virgin and to visit our earth. To each body is given its respective head; so the whole world, which the poet calls "the great body," should content itself with a single temporal head. A creature with two heads is a monster; how much more horrid and frightful a prodigy is a being with a thousand separate heads, wrangling among themselves and tearing each other. But if there must be several heads, there certainly should be one which is above the others and controls everything, so that the whole body may remain at peace. It is a truth amply proved by innumerable experiences, and supported by the authority of the most learned, that in heaven and on earth unity of rule has always been best. That God Omnipotent has willed that the supreme head should be no other than Rome, he has shown by a thousand signs, for he has rendered Rome worthy, by the glory of both peace and war, and has granted her a preëminence of power, marvellous and unexampled.

Although this be true, yet if in the past a nation, following the custom of the human heart, which daily rejoices in its own evil, has, as I have said, chosen to embrace a harmful and doubtful liberty rather than accept the safe and advantageous dominion of the common mother, it may still be pardoned for its audacity or stupidity. But who can, without scandal, hear the question raised among learned men whether the Roman Empire is at Rome? Must we assume, then, that the Parthian, the Persian, and the Median kingdoms remain with the Parthians, the Persians, and the Medes, respectively, but that the Roman Empire wanders about? Who can stomach such an absurdity? Who will not, rather, vomit it up and utterly reject it? If the Roman Empire is not at Rome, pray where is it? If it is anywhere else than at Rome it is no longer the Empire of the Romans, but belongs to those with whom an erratic fate has left it. Although the Roman generals were, owing to the exigencies of the Republic, often engaged with their armies in the far east or extreme west, or found themselves in the regions of Boreas or of Auster, the Roman dominion in the meantime was at Rome, and Rome it was which determined whether the Roman generals merited reward or punishment. It was determined upon the Capitol who should be honoured, who punished, who should enter the city as a private citizen, who with the honours of an ovation or of a triumph. Even after the tyranny, or, as we prefer to say, the monarchy, of Julius Cæsar was established, the Roman rulers, although they were assigned a place in the council of the gods themselves, continued, as we well know, to ask the consent of the Senate or of the Roman people in the conduct of the government, and according as that permission was granted or refused they proceeded with, or desisted from, their proposed action. Emperors may, therefore, wander about, but the Empire is fixed and forever immovable. And we may well infer that it was no temporary site but its eternal place to which Virgil refers when he says:

While on the rock-fast Capitol Æneas' house abides, And while the Roman Father still the might of Empire guides.[3]

... It was, however, also a Roman who wrote, "All that is born dies, and that which increases grows old." Nor does it distress me that Fortune exercises her prerogatives in your case as well as in that of others, and, in order plainly to show that she is mistress of human affairs, fears not to lay hands upon the very head of the world. I well know her violence and her inconstancy. Still, I cannot endure the idle boasts of certain unbridled nations, and the insolent conduct of those whose neck long bore the yoke of Rome. To pass over many other outrageous themes of discussion, they raise the question--oh, unhappy and shameful suggestion!--whether the Roman Empire is at Rome.

It is indeed true that upon a spot now covered with trackless forest royal palaces may some time arise; and where to-day stand halls resplendent with gold, the hungry flocks may some time pasture, and the wandering shepherds occupy the apartments of kings. I do not depreciate the power of Fortune. As she has obliterated other cities, so, with no more effort, if with greater ruin, she may destroy the queen of cities. Alas, she has already partially accomplished this; but she can never bring it about that the Roman Empire can be anywhere else than at Rome, for as soon as it is anywhere else it ceases to be Roman.

This your unfortunate fellow-citizen has maintained, and will not deny that he still maintains; and this constitutes the terrible crime for which his life is endangered. He claims that his assertion is based upon the opinion of many wise men, nor do I think that he is wrong. He further entreats that counsel and the opportunity to defend himself be granted him. This is refused; and, without divine mercy and your support, he is undone; innocent and defenceless, he will be condemned.

Almost everyone pities him; there is scarcely one who is not distressed for him, except those whose duty it is to be compassionate, to forgive the erring, and to feel no envy toward virtue. Distinguished lawyers are not wanting here who claim that this same proposition can be most clearly proved by the civil law. Others maintain that they could cite many and weighty references in the histories, which go to substantiate this opinion, if it were only permitted them to speak freely. But no one now dares to hint a word of this, except in a corner, or timidly and in secret. Even I who write this to you, although I might not refuse to die for the truth, if my death would seem to promise any advantage to the Republic,--even I now keep my peace, and do not affix my name to this present communication, believing that the style itself will suffice to indicate the writer, though I may add that it is a Roman citizen who speaks.[4] But if the matter should be considered in a place of safety, before a just judge, and not in the tribunal of our enemies, I hope, with the truth illuminating my intellect, and God directing my speech or pen, to be able to say that which will render it clearer than day that the Roman Empire, although long wasted and oppressed by the attacks of fortune, and occupied in turn by Spaniards, Africans, Greeks, Gauls, and Germans, still exists; that it is at Rome, not elsewhere; and that it will always remain there, although absolutely nothing of that great city should be left except the naked rock of the Capitol. I will prove, further, that even before we were ruled by foreigners, and while the Roman Cæsars still held the power, all the authority of the Empire was lodged, not in them, but in the citadel of the Capitol and in the Roman people....[5]

Bear such aid, then, as you can and ought, to your Tribune, or, if that title is extinguished, to your fellow-citizen, who has merited well at the hands of the Republic; first and foremost, because he has raised a great and important question which had been lost sight of and neglected for centuries, and which indicates the only means toward a reformation of the state and the ushering in of the golden age. Succour this man! Do not neglect the safety of one who has incurred a thousand perils and subjected himself to eternal despite in your behalf. Consider his spirit and his purpose, and remember the former state of your affairs, and how quickly the advice and efforts of a single man excited a wonderful hope, not only in Rome, but throughout Italy. Remember how speedily the Italian name and the glory of Rome were elevated and purified; remember the fear and disappointment of your enemies, the joy of your friends, the anticipations of the people; how the course of events was altered, how the whole universe assumed a new aspect, and the disposition of men's minds was changed. Among all the revolutions under heaven none has been so wonderful and astounding as this. For seven months, not longer, he held the reins of the Republic by an effort which in my judgment finds scarcely a parallel in the whole history of the world; and had he continued as he began he would have accomplished a divine rather than a human work. Indeed, whatever man does well is the work of God. There is, then, no doubt that this man, who is known to have acted for your glory and not to satisfy his own ambition, deserves your favour. You must blame Fortune for the outcome. If his original fervour gave way to a certain lethargy, forgive this in the name of human inconstancy and weakness, and save your fellow-citizen while you may from his enemies; you, who formerly protected the Greeks from the Macedonians, the Sicilians from the Carthaginians, the Campanians from the Samnites, and the Etrurians from the Gauls, and that not without serious peril to yourselves.

Your resources are, I confess, no longer what they once were, but never did your fathers show such valour as when Roman poverty, which forms the wealth of virtue, flourished. Your power is less, that I do not forget; but believe me, if a drop of the old blood still flows in your veins, you may yet enjoy no little majesty and no trifling authority. Venture somewhat, I adjure you, in memory of past greatness, in the name of the ashes and fame of your ancestors, in the name of the Empire, in the name of Jesus Christ, who bade us love our neighbour and aid the afflicted. Have courage, I beseech you, above all in a matter where your petition is honourable, and silence shameful and unbecoming. If not for his welfare, dare to do something for the sake of your own reputation, if you would still count for anything. There is nothing less Roman than fear. I forewarn you that if you are afraid, if you despise yourselves, others, too, will despise you; no one will fear you. But if you once begin to desire not to be scorned you will be feared far and wide, as has often been proved in the past, and but lately, also, when that ruler to whom I refer was governing the Republic. You have but to speak as one; let the world recognise that the Roman people has but a single voice, and no one will reject or scorn their words; everyone will respect or fear them. Claim the captive, or demand justice; one or the other will be conceded to you. And you, who once by a trifling embassy freed a King of Egypt besieged by the Syrians, free now your fellow-citizen from a shameful prison.

1: _Ep. sine Titulo_, iv. (Also in Fracassetti's _App. Lit_., No. 1.)

2: Rienzo was accused of heresy, and it was quite in accord with the jurisprudence of the inquisition to refuse him counsel.

3: _Æneid_, ix., 448, 449, as translated by William Morris. Petrarch here makes an excursus in order to free Virgil from the reproach of Augustine, who asserts that the poet mendaciously promises (_Æneid_, i., 278, 279) the Romans an endless empire. These words, Petrarch points out, were discreetly put into Jove's mouth, whereas, when speaking for himself, Virgil refers (_Georgics_, ii., 498) to _res Romanæ perituraque regna._

4: Petrarch had been made a citizen of Rome at the time of his coronation.

5: Petrarch, in the passage which follows, urges the Romans to procure the transfer of Rienzo's case to Rome, or at least to demand that he shall be granted a public audience and a fair trial.

* * * * *

Some two years after Rienzo's retirement, Petrarch addressed his first letter to Charles of Bohemia, who already enjoyed the title of King of the Romans, but had not yet been crowned Emperor at Rome, as was then customary. While we cannot attempt to analyse the anomalous character of this historically important personage, it will nevertheless be readily and justly inferred that little real sympathy could exist between our ardent southern _doctrinaire_ and the sober northern ruler. Petrarch was too thoroughly Italian really to respect Charles personally. He could never place unreserved confidence in a German from the cold north, "where there is no noble ardour or vital heat of empire."[1] To his fellow-countryman, Rienzo, had been drawn both by the hope of seeing Rome once more supreme and, as we have seen, by natural affinity, and a common fiery enthusiasm for the mighty lessons of antiquity. Charles enlisted his interest only as the titular successor of the Cæsars. The vitality, and, it must be admitted, the absurdity, of Petrarch's political theories are clearly seen in his long correspondence with the Emperor. He clung to his ideal with such tenacity that he continued to despatch appeal after appeal across the Alps, in spite of deluded hopes and disappointments which might well have appeared decisive.[2]

The letters shed little or no light upon the conditions of the times, or upon the interrelations of the Italian states. We hear of Veii and of the Samnites, but the writer passes over the more pertinent Florence and the Visconti in silence. In one instance only does he refer to existing conditions. The success of Rienzo is cited with a hope of rousing the King's emulation.[3] If Peace and Justice and their inseparable companions, Good Faith and sweet Security, returned at the call of the Tribune, how much might not justly be expected from the spell of the imperial name? Charles was to free the Italians from slavery, to reinstate justice, now prostituted to avarice, and once more to bring back peace, long fallen into utter oblivion.[4] No more complete or specific program is offered; the poet satisfies himself with the constant reiteration of the eternal fitness of Rome's headship. This had satisfied many generations of political writers; it is the central idea of mediæval thought, whether in the field of secular or ecclesiastical political speculation. Petrarch adds nothing to it, and the chief interest in his messages is, perhaps, their conservatism. His study of the classics did not modify but served only to intensify the current conception. For him there was no mean between the traditional anachronism of a world-monarchy and the petty, unscrupulous, restless despotisms about him.

In one respect, however, Petrarch advanced beyond the fruitless repetition of old fantastic theory, for he viewed Charles not only as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire but as a new Augustus, a patron of literature. Upon receiving a letter from his royal friend he exclaims, "If it was deemed a glorious thing for Virgil and Horace to gain the notice and companionship of Cæsar Augustus and to receive his letters, why should not I, their successor, not indeed in merit but in time, and perhaps in the opinion of men,--why should not I feel justly proud to be similarly distinguished by Augustus' successor?"[5] The tribute here implied to the Emperor's interest in letters was by no means entirely unmerited. Petrarch, as we have repeatedly seen, was strongly attached to the rulers of his day, in whom he either discovered, or quickly aroused, a certain enthusiasm for the new culture. They came to relish the society of men of letters, and to extend to them their princely patronage, during the long humanistic epoch of which he was the herald.

1: _Fam._, xx., 2 (vol. iii., p. 9).

2: The senselessness of anticipating good from the arrival of the Emperor is bitterly dwelt upon in _De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ_, book i., chap. 116.

3: _Fam_., xviii. (vol. ii., p. 464).

4: _Fam_., xviii. (vol. ii., p. 468).

5: _Fam._, xxiii., 2 (vol. iii., p. 184).

* * * * *

_To Charles IV., Emperor August of the Romans._[1]

My letter, most serene Emperor, when it considers its origin, whence it proceeds and whither it is bound, is filled with dread at the thought of the gulf over which it must pass. Born in the shadow of obscurity, what wonder if it is dazzled by the brilliancy of your splendid name? But love casteth out fear: it will, as it ventures into the light of your presence, at least serve to bear to you the message of my faithful affection. Read, then, I pray you, Glory of our Age, read! for you need fear no empty flattery, that common affliction of kings, so irksome and hateful to you. The art of adulation is repugnant to my character; prepare rather to listen to my lamentations, for you are now to be disturbed not by compliments but by complaints.

Why do you forget us--nay, forget yourself, if I may be pardoned for so speaking? How is it that your Italy no longer enjoys your watchful care? We have long placed our hope in you, as one sent to us from heaven, who would speedily re-establish our liberty; but you have forsaken us, and, when action is most essential, you occupy your time in lengthy deliberations.--You will perceive, Cæsar, how frankly I dare to address you, though a person insignificant and unknown. Be not offended at my boldness, I beseech you, but congratulate yourself upon the possession of a nature which can arouse this confidence in me.

To revert to the question in hand, why do you spend your time in mere consultation, as if master of the future? Do you not know how abruptly the most important matter may reach a crisis? A day may bring forth what has been preparing for centuries. Believe me, if you but consider your own reputation, and the condition of the state, you will clearly perceive that neither your interests nor ours require longer delay. What is more fleeting and uncertain than life? Although you are now at the height of manly vigour, your strength will not endure, but is slipping from you steadily and apace. Each day carries you insensibly toward old age. You hesitate and look about you; ere you are aware, your hair will be white. Can you apprehend that you are premature in undertaking a task for which, as you must know, the longest life would scarcely suffice? The business before you is no common or trifling affair. The Roman Empire, long harassed by storms, and again and again deluded in its hopes of safety, has at last placed its waning reliance in your uprightness and devotion. After a thousand perils, it ventures. under the protection of your name, to breathe once more; but hope alone cannot long sustain it. You must realise how great and how holy a burden of responsibility you have assumed. Press on, we exhort you, to the goal, with the utmost speed!

Time is so precious, nay, so inestimable a possession, that it is the one thing which the learned agree can justify avarice. So cast hesitation to the winds and, as behooves one who is entering upon a momentous task, count every day a priceless opportunity. Let this thought make you frugal of time, and induce you to come to our rescue, and show the light of your august countenance, for which we long amidst the clouds of our adversity. Let not solicitude for Transalpine affairs, nor the love of your native soil, detain you; but whenever you look upon Germany, think of Italy. There you were born, here you were nurtured; there you enjoy a kingdom, here both a kingdom and an empire; and, as I believe I may, with the consent of all nations and peoples, safely add, while the members of the Empire are everywhere, here you will find the head itself. There must, however, be no slothfulness if you would reach the desired result, for it will prove no small matter to re-unite all these precious fragments into a single body.

I well know that novelty always excites suspicion, but you are not summoned to an unknown land. Italy is no less familiar to you than Germany itself. Pledged to us by divine favour from your childhood, you followed, with extraordinary ability, the footsteps of your illustrious father.[2] Under his guidance you made yourself acquainted with the Italian cities, the customs of the people, the configuration of the land, and mastered in this way the first principles of your glorious profession. Here, while still a boy, and with a prowess more than mortal, you gained many a famous victory. Yet great as were these deeds they but foreshadowed greater things; since, as a man, you could not look with apprehension upon a country which had afforded you, as a youth, the opportunity for such signal triumphs. You could forecast from the auspicious results of your first campaign what you might, as Emperor, anticipate upon the same field.

Moreover, Italy has never awaited the coming of any foreign prince with more joy; for not only is there no one else to whom she can look for the healing of her wounds, but your yoke she does not regard as that of an alien. Thus your majesty, although you may not be aware of it, enjoys a peculiar position in our eyes.--Why should I fear to say frankly what I think, and what will, I am confident, appear to you as true?--By the marvellous favour of God our own national character is once more restored to us, after so many centuries, in you, our Augustus. Let the Germans claim you for themselves, if they please; we look upon you as an Italian. Hasten then, as I have so often said, and must continue to say, hasten! I know that the acts of the Cæsars delight you,--and rightly, for you are one of them. The founder of the Empire moved, it is reported, with such rapidity that he often arrived before the messengers sent to announce his coming. Follow his example. Strive to rival in deeds him whom you equal in rank. Do not longer deprive Italy, which deserves well of you, of your presence. Do not cool our enthusiasm by continued delay and the despatch of messengers. It is you whom we desire, it is your celestial countenance that we ask to behold. If you love virtue (I address our Charles as Cicero addressed Julius Cæsar), and thirst for glory--for you will not disclaim this thirst, wise though you be--do not, I beseech you, shun exertion. For he who escapes effort escapes both glory and virtue, which are never attained but by a steep and laborious path. Arise then and gird up your loins, for we know you to be eager for true praise and ready for noble toil.

You will rightly place the heaviest burdens in this mighty undertaking upon the strongest backs, and upon those in the prime of life, for youth is the suitable time for work, old age for repose. Surely there is among all your important and sacred duties none more pressing than that you should restore gentle peace once more to Italy. This task alone is worthy of your manly strength; others are too slight to occupy so great and generous a spirit. Do this first, and the rest will find an appropriate time. Indeed, I cannot but feel that little or nothing would remain to be done when peace and order were again established in Italy.

Picture to yourself the Genius of the city of Rome, presenting herself before you. Imagine a matron, with the dignity of age, but with her grey locks dishevelled, her garments rent, and her face overspread with the pallor of misery; and yet with an unbroken spirit, and unforgetful of the majesty of former days, she addresses you as follows: "Lest thou shouldst angrily scorn me, Cæsar, know that once I was powerful, and performed great deeds. I ordained laws, and established the divisions of the year. I taught the art of war. I maintained myself for five hundred years in Italy; then, as many a witness will testify, I carried war and victory into Asia, Africa, and Europe, finally compassing the whole world, and by gigantic effort, by wisdom and the shedding of much blood, I laid the foundation of the rising Empire.[3] ... At last the ocean, which I had dyed with the blood of both my enemies and my children, was subjected to our fleets, in order that from the seeds of war the flower of perpetual peace might spring; and by the work of many hands the Empire might be so established that it should endure until thy time. Nor was I disappointed in my hopes; my wish was granted, and I beheld everything beneath my feet. But then, I know not why, unless it is not fitting that the works of mortals should prove themselves immortal, my magnificent structure fell a prey to sloth and indifference.

"I need not relate again the sad story of its decline; thou canst behold the state to which it is reduced. Thou, who hast been chosen to succour me when hope had well-nigh deserted me, why dost thou loiter, why dost thou vainly hesitate and consider? Assuredly, I never stood in more dire need of assistance, nor hast thou ever been better placed to bear aid. Never was the Roman pontiff more mildly inclined, nor the favour of God and man more propitious; never did greater deeds await the doing. Dost thou still defer? Delay has always been most fatal to great princes. Would that thou mightest be moved to emulate the illustrious example of those who left nothing for old age, but straightway grasped an opportunity which might offer itself but once. Alexander of Macedon had at thine age traversed the whole Orient, and, burning to extend his kingdom over alien races, knocked at the gates of India. Dost thou, who wouldst only recover thine own, hesitate to enter thy devoted Italy? At thine age Scipio Africanus crossed into Africa, in spite of the adverse counsels of older men, and supported with pious hands an empire tottering upon the verge of ruin. With an incredible display of valour he freed me from the impending yoke of Carthage. His was a mighty task, and, by reason of its unheard-of dangers, memorable to all generations. While war was bitterly waging in our country he invaded the land of the enemy. Hannibal, conqueror of Italy, Gaul, and Spain (who was already contemplating, in his dreadful ambition, the dominion of the whole earth), Scipio cast out of Italy and vanquished upon his own soil. But thou hast no seas to cross nor a Hannibal to defeat; the way is free from difficulty, all is open and accessible. Should obstacles present themselves, as some fear, thy presence will shatter them as with a thunderbolt. A vast field of fresh glory spreads out before thee, if thou dost not refuse to enter it. Press bravely, confidently forward. God, the companion and present help of the righteous prince, will be with thee. The armed cohorts of the good and upright will gather about thee, demanding to regain under thy leadership their lost liberty.

"I might urge thee on by examples of another character, of those who by death or by some other insuperable check were unable to bring their glorious undertakings to an end. But we need not look abroad for instances when such excellent illustrations are to be had at home. Without searching the annals, a single example, most familiar to thee, will serve for all, that of Henry VII., thy most serene grandfather of glorious memory. Had his life been spared to accomplish what his noble mind had conceived, how different would have been the fate of Italy! He would have driven his enemies to despair, and would have left me once more queen of a free and happy people. From where he now dwells in heaven he looks down upon thee and considers thy conduct. He counts the days and the hours, and joins me in chiding thy delay.

"'Beloved grandson,' he pleads, 'in whom the good place their hope, and in whom I seem still to live, listen to our Rome, give heed to her tears and noble prayers. Carry out my plan of reforming the state, which my death interrupted, working thereby greater harm to the world than to me. Imitate my zeal, fruitless as it was, and mayest thou, with like ardour, bring thy task to a happier and more joyful issue. Begin, lest thou shouldst be prevented; mindful of me, know that thou, too, art mortal. Up, then; surmount the passes! Joyful at thy approach, Rome summons her bridegroom, Italy her saviour, yearning to hear thy footsteps. The hills and rivers await thy coming in glad anticipation; the cities and towns await thee, as do the hearts of all good men. If there were no other motive for thy departure, a sufficient reason would be found in the opinion of evil men, in whose eyes thou canst never linger too long, and in the belief of the good, that thy coming cannot be unduly hastened. For the sake of both, delay no longer; let the virtuous receive their reward; bring retribution upon the evil, or, if they come to their senses, grant them thy forgiveness. To thee alone God Omnipotent has granted the final glory of my interrupted purpose.'"

* * * * *

Charles finally decided that it would be to his advantage to visit Italy and receive the imperial crown at Rome. His motives, however, had little in common with those which are set forth in the preceding letter. He arrived in Lombardy in the autumn of 1354; and after adjusting, temporarily at least, his complicated diplomatic relations with the states of northern Italy, he called Petrarch to him, in the bitter cold of December.

1: _Fam_., x., 1. This letter may with confidence be dated Padua, Feb. 24, 1350. _Cf._ Gregorovius, _op. cit._, vi., 341.

2: That is, King John of Bohemia, who perished romantically in the battle of Crécy. He made an expedition into Italy in 1329, to which Petrarch here refers.

3: A page is here omitted which briefly reviews the gradual extension of the Roman power.

* * * * *

_His Audience with the Emperor._

_To "Lælius."_[1]

... On the fourth day after leaving Milan I arrived at Mantua, where I was received by the successor of our Cæsars with a cordiality hardly to be expected from a Cæsar, and with a graciousness more than imperial. Omitting details, I may say that we two sometimes spent the whole evening, from the time the lights were first lit until an unseasonably late hour of the night, in conversation and discussion. Nothing, in a word, could be more refined and engaging than the dignified manners of this prince. So much, at least, I know; but I must defer a final judgment upon his other traits, in accordance with the dictum of the Satirist, "Trust not the face." We must wait! We must, if I mistake not, take counsel of the acts of the man and their outcome, not of his face and words, if we would determine how far he merits the title of Cæsar. Nor did I hesitate frankly to tell him this.

The conversation happening to descend to my works, the Emperor requested copies of some of them, especially of that one which I have entitled _Lives of Famous Men_. I replied that the latter was still unfinished, and that time and leisure were necessary to its completion. Upon asking me to agree to send it to him later, he met with an example of my customary freedom of speech when talking with persons of rank. This frankness, which I had by nature, becomes more pronounced as the years go on, and by the time I reach old age it will doubtless exceed all bounds. "I promise that you shall have it," I answered, "if your valour approves itself, and my life is spared."? As he asked, in surprise, for an explanation, I replied that as far as I was concerned I might properly demand that a suitable period be granted me for the completion of so considerable a work, as it was especially difficult to set forth the history of great deeds in a limited space. "As for you, Cæsar," I continued, "you will know yourself to be worthy of this gift, and of a book bearing such a title, when you shall be distinguished not in name only, and by the possession of a diadem, insignificant in itself, but also by your deeds; and when, by the greatness of your character, you shall have placed yourself upon a level with the illustrious men of the past. You must so live that posterity shall read of your great deeds as you read of those of the ancients."

That my utterance met with his ready approval was clearly shown by the sparkle of his eye and the inclination of his august head; and it seemed to me that the time had come to carry out something which I had long planned. Following up the opportunity afforded by my words, I presented him with some gold and silver coins, which I held very dear. They bore the effigies of some of our rulers,--one of them, a most lifelike head of Cæsar Augustus,--and were inscribed with exceedingly minute ancient characters. "Behold, Cæsar, those whose successor you are," I exclaimed, "those whom you should admire and emulate, and with whose image you may well compare your own. To no one but you would I have given these coins, but your rank and authority induces me to part with them. I know the name, the character, and the history, of each of those who are there depicted, but you have not merely to know their history, you must follow in their footsteps;--the coins should, therefore, belong to you." Thereupon I gave him the briefest outline of the great events in the life of each of the persons represented, adding such words as might stimulate his courage and his desire to imitate their conduct. He exhibited great delight, and seemed never to have received a present which afforded him more satisfaction.

But why should I linger upon these details? Among the many things we discussed I will mention only one matter, which will, I think, surprise you. The Emperor desired to hear, in due order, the history--or shall I say the romance?--of my life, from the day of my birth to the present time. Although I protested that the story was long and by no means diverting, he listened to me through it all with grave attention, and when, from forgetfulness or a desire to hasten on, I omitted some event, he straightway supplied it, seeming often to be better acquainted with my past than I myself. I was astonished that any wind was strong enough to have wafted such trifles across the Alps, and that they had caught the eye of one whose attention was absorbed by the cares of state. When I finally reached the present time in my narrative I paused, but the Emperor pressed me to tell him something of my plans for the future. "Continue," he said; "what of the future? What objects have you now in view?" "My intentions are of the best, Cæsar," I replied, "although I have been unable to bring my work to the state of perfection I should have desired. The habits of the past are strong, and prevail in the conflict with the good intentions of the present. The heart opposes a new determination, as the sea which has been driven by a steady breeze rises up against a contrary wind." "I can well believe you," he answered, "but my question really referred to a different matter, namely, to the kind of life which pleases you best." "The life of solitude," I promptly and boldly answered, "for no existence can be safer, or more peaceful and happy. It transcends, in my opinion, even the glory and eminence of your sovereign position. I love to pursue solitude, when I may, into her own proper haunts,--the forests and mountains. Often in the past have I done this, and when, as at present, it is impossible, I do the best I can, and seek such seclusion as is to be found in the city itself." He smiled, and said, "All this I well know, and have intentionally led you step by step, by my questions, to this confession. While I agree with many of your opinions, I must deprecate this notion of yours."

And so a great discussion arose between us, which I did not hesitate to interrupt by exclaiming: "Beware, Cæsar, of your course! for in this conflict your arms are by no means equal to mine. This is a debate in which not only are you predestined to defeat, but a very Chrysippus, armed with syllogisms, would have no chance of victory. I have for a long time meditated upon nothing else, and my head is full of arguments and illustrations. Experience, the mistress of the world, sides with me, although the stupid and ignorant multitude oppose my view. I refuse to engage with you, Cæsar, for I should inevitably be declared the victor by any fair-minded person, although he were himself a dweller in the city. Indeed, I am so absorbed by the subject that I have recently issued a little book which treats of some small part of it." Here he interrupted me, declaring that he knew of the book, and that, should it ever fall into his hands, he would promptly commit it to the flames. I told him, in reply, that I should see to it that it never came in his way. Thus our discussion was protracted by many a merry sally, and I must confess that, among all those whom I have heard attack the life of seclusion, I have never found one who advanced more weighty arguments. The outcome was, if I do not deceive myself, that the Emperor was worsted (if it is permissible to say or think that an Emperor can be worsted), both by my arguments and by reason, but in his own opinion he was not only undefeated but remained clearly the victor.

In conclusion, he requested me to accompany him to Rome. This request was, he explained, his primary motive in subjecting one who held quiet in such esteem to the discomforts of this inclement season. He desired to behold the famous city not only with his own but, so to speak, with my eyes. He needed my presence, he said, in certain Tuscan cities,--of which he spoke in a way that would have led one to believe him an Italian, or possessed, at least, of an Italian mind. This would have been most agreeable to me, and the two words "Rome" and "Cæsar" rang most gratefully in my ears; nothing, I thought, could be more delightful than to accompany Cæsar to Rome; nevertheless I felt obliged, for many good reasons, and owing to unavoidable circumstances, to refuse him.

A new discussion ensued in regard to this matter, which lasted many days and did not end until the last adieux were said. For as the Emperor left Milan I accompanied him to the fifth milestone beyond the walls of Piacenza, and even then it was only after a long struggle of opposing arguments that I could tear myself away. As I was about to depart a certain Tuscan soldier in the imperial guards took me by the hand, and, turning to the Emperor, addressed him in a bold but solemn voice. "Here is he," he said, "of whom I have often spoken to you. If you shall do anything worthy of praise, he will not allow your name to be silently forgotten; otherwise, he will know when to speak and when to keep his peace."

But to return to our first subject.[2] I do not, as you can see, repudiate the honour you ascribe to me, because it is distasteful, but because truth is dearer to me than all else. I did not negotiate the peace, though I ardently desired it; I was not deputed to bring it about, but only aided with exhortations and words of encouragement. I was not present at the beginning but only at the close, since Cæsar and my good fortune decreed my presence at the solemn public ratification of the treaty which followed its conclusion.

Assuredly no Italian has ever received such tributes as I have at this juncture. I have been summoned by Cæsar and urged to be his companion; I have been permitted to jest and argue with him. The tyrant Dionysius, as Pliny tells us, once sent a ship covered with garlands to fetch Plato, the disciple of wisdom; and as he disembarked he was received upon the shore by the prince himself, in a chariot drawn by four white horses. These things are spoken of as magnificent tributes to Plato, and as redounding to his glory. You see now, my dear Lælius, whither I am tending, and that I omit no opportunity which promises distinction. What might I not venture, who do not fear to compare myself to Plato?...[3]

* * * * *

The hasty, undignified retreat of Charles from Italy, and the bitter reproaches which Petrarch sent after him, did not prevent a resumption of the intercourse begun in 1350.[4] A year after the Emperor's departure Petrarch went to Prague, as ambassador of the Visconti, but we hear no particulars of his sojourn at that new centre of culture. In a letter written after this visit we find the graceful acknowledgment of the gift of a golden cup from the Emperor, who continued to urge the poet to make his home in Prague? Petrarch at last reluctantly prepared to obey the summons, but was happily prevented by the military occupation of the Alpine passes from undertaking a journey which he little relished. He continued to press the return of the Emperor as Italy's saviour until, finally, "hoarse" with repeated cries for help, he sent his last vain appeal,[5] some ten years after Charles departure.

1: _Fam_., xix., 3. The first part of the letter, describing, among other things, the severe cold, is omitted.

2: The rumour had reached Lælius that Petrarch had been deputed by the Milanese government to negotiate a peace with Charles.

3: The closing paragraph is omitted.

4: Fourteen letters to Charles are preserved in all.

5 _Fam_., xxiii., 21.

VI

THE CONFLICT OF MONASTIC AND SECULAR IDEALS

Non sumus aut exhortatione virtutis aut vicinæ mortis obtentu a litteris deterendi.--_Sen_., i., 4.

The tendencies toward Paganism which the enthusiastic and exclusive study of the ancient classics produced among the Italian Humanists of the fifteenth century are so well known that it is natural to ask what was the attitude of the founder of Humanism toward the generally accepted religious beliefs of his day.

The question of the propriety of reading pagan works had agitated the Church from the first, and the views of the devout had varied greatly. There had always been distinguished leaders, like Augustine, who made due use of pagan learning and eloquence, and defended a discriminating study of the heathen writers; while others, among whom Gregory the Great was preëminent, had harshly condemned "the idle vanities of secular learning," for the reason "that the same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ."[1] Many timid churchmen were fearful, like Jack Cade, of those who talked of "a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian can endure to hear." In short, the effects produced upon the religious convictions by a study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and Lucretius have always varied with the mental make-up, the maturity and surroundings, of the individual, just as nowadays a study of science may or may not influence the faith of the believer. In notable instances, scientific pursuits not only leave the student's religious system essentially unimpaired but may even serve to fortify a traditional form of theology. On the other hand, an absorbing interest in scientific investigation often produces religious indifference. In still other minds such research will arouse opposition to what comes to seem to them a vicious and degraded form of superstition. This opposition will vary from dignified but uncompromising negation to a frantic belligerency not unlike that of the ecclesiastical opponents of "poetry" in the middle ages.

Turning to Petrarch, we may at first be tempted to infer that his religious beliefs were in no way affected by his sympathetic study of pagan literature. His writings prove beyond a peradventure that he was a devout Catholic, even an ardent defender of orthodoxy. He composed several devotional works, unimpeachably sound in their teaching, as, for example, the tract upon _True Wisdom_, and his _Penitential Psalms_. He was deeply incensed by the defection of the young men who accepted the doctrines of Averroes, and prepared a refutation of their heresies, as we have seen.[2] And he was no exception to the rule, for there were few, if any, among the first generation of Humanists who affected the paganism characteristic of the later Renaissance.[3] But Petrarch not only refused to question the authority of the Church; he went much farther, and, in, theory at least, heartily accepted the prevalent ascetic ideals. He freely, acknowledges the superior perfection of the monastic life; it is, he feels, the only sure road to Heaven. In writing to Gherardo, who had become a Carthusian monk, he begs him not to despair of his salvation although, he still remains in the world. His sins, however great, are still finite, while the divine clemency upon which he relies is boundless.[4]

But such reflections as fill the letter from which we quote are, the writer explicitly tells us, not his own, for it is the pen of another self, a "monastic pen," which records them. He speaks truly; he had no real love for a consistent life of seclusion and maceration, yet when his spirit was heavy, when the vanity of earthly ambition was more than usually oppressive, he might long for the irresponsible routine of the monastery. Sometimes, too, he seems unconsciously to have confused a scholar's desire for leisure and retirement with the quite different claims of the cloister.[5]

1: _Ep_., ix., 54.

2: _I.e., De Suiipsius et Multorum Ignorantia_. See above, pp. 215, 216. (During his residence in Venice...)

3: _Cf_. Pastor, _Geschichte der Päpste_, vol. i., p. 1 _sqq_.

4: _Fam_., x., 3.

5: Once, upon his return from a visit to the Carthusian monastery which Gherardo had selected, Petrarch wrote a eulogy of monastic life, _De Otio Religiosorum_, which may be found among his works.

* * * * *

The following letter to Boccaccio explains itself.

_Religion does not Require us to Give up Literature._

_To Boccaccio._[1]

Your letter, my brother, filled me with the saddest forebodings. As I ran through it amazement and profound grief struggled for the supremacy in my heart, but when I had finished, both gave way to other feelings. As long as I was ignorant of the facts, and attended only to the words, how indeed could I read, with dry eyes, of your tears and approaching death? For at first glance I quite failed to see the real state of affairs. A little thought, however, served to put me in quite a different frame of mind, and to banish both grief and surprise.

But before I proceed I must touch upon the matter to which you refer in the earlier part of your letter. You dare not deprecate, you say with the utmost deference, the plan of your illustrious master--as you too humbly call me--for migrating to Germany, or far-off Sarmatia (I quote your words), carrying with me, as you would have it, all the Muses, and Helicon itself, as if I deemed the Italians unworthy longer to enjoy my presence or the fruits of my labour. You well know, however, that I have never been other than an obscure and lowly dweller on Helicon, and that I have been so distracted by outside cares as to have become by this time almost an exile. I must admit that your method of holding me back from such a venture is more efficacious than a flood of satirical eloquence would have been. I am much gratified by such tokens of your esteem, and by the keen interest you exhibit. I should much prefer to see signs of exaggerated apprehension on your part (_omnia tuta timens_, as Virgil says) than any suggestion of waning affection.

I have no desire to conceal any of my plans from you, dear friend, and will freely tell you the whole secret of my poor wounded heart. I can never see enough of this land of Italy; but, by Hercules! I am so utterly disgusted with Italian affairs that, as I recently wrote to our Simonides, I must confess that I have sometimes harboured the idea of betaking myself--not to Germany, certainly, but to some secluded part of the world. There I might hope to escape this eternal hubbub, as well as the storms of jealousy to which I am exposed not so much by my lot in life (which to my thinking might rather excite contempt than envy) as by a certain renown which I have acquired in some way or other. Thus secluded I should have done what I could to live an upright life and die a righteous death. This design I should have carried out had not fortune prevented. But as to turning my thoughts northward, that was by no means done with the intention which you imagine. I did not think of seeking repose in that barbarous and uninviting land, with its inclement sky. I was only submitting, from motives of respect and propriety, to the solicitations of our Emperor, who had repeatedly urged me to come and see him, with such insistence that my refusal to visit him, for a short time at least, might have been regarded as an exhibition of pride and rebellion, or even as a species of sacrilege. For, as you have read in Valerius, our ancestors were wont to regard those who could not venerate princes as capable of any form of crime. But you may dismiss your fears, and cease your laments; for--to my not very great regret--I have found this road, too, blocked by war. Anomalously enough, I am glad not to go where I should with even greater gladness have gone if I had been able. To have wished to go is enough to satisfy both my ruler's desires and my own scruples; for the rest fortune was responsible.

Leaving this matter, I come back to that part of your letter which so affected me on first reading. You say that a certain Peter, a native of Sienna, noted for his piety and for the miracles which he performed, has recently died; that on his death-bed, among many predictions relating to various persons, he had something to say of both of us; and that, moreover, he sent a messenger to you to communicate his last words. When you inquired how this holy man, of whom we had never heard, happened to know so much about us, the messenger replied that the deceased had, it is understood, undertaken a certain work of piety; but when, having been told as I surmise that death was near, he saw himself unable to accomplish his proposed mission, he prayed a prayer of great efficacy, which could not fail to make its way to Heaven, that proper substitutes might be designated, who should bring to a successful close the chosen task which it was not the will of God that he himself should complete. With that intimacy of intercourse which exists between God and the soul of the just, Heaven ordained that he should see Christ in person, and thus know that his petition had been heard and granted. And in Christ's face it was conceded to him to read "_the things that are, the things that have been, and the things that are to come_," not as Proteus does in Virgil, but far more perfectly, clearly, and fully; for what could escape one who was permitted to look upon the face of him to whom all things owe their being?

It is certainly a most astounding thing, this seeing Christ with mortal eyes, if only it be true. For it is an old and much-used device, to drape one's own lying inventions with the veil of religion and sanctity, in order to give the appearance of divine sanction to human fraud. But I cannot pronounce upon this case at present, nor until the messenger of the deceased presents himself to me in person. For you tell me that he visited you first because you were nearest, and, having delivered his message, departed for Naples, intending to go thence by sea to France and England, and lastly to visit me and impart such of his instructions as related to my case. I can then see for myself how much faith he succeeds in arousing in me. I shall closely interrogate everything about him,--his age, face, eyes, dress, bearing, gait, even his tone of voice, movements, style of address, and, above all, his apparent object and the upshot of his discourse.

The gist of the whole matter is then, as I infer, that the holy man as he was dying had a vision of us two, and along with us of several others as well, and intrusted certain secret messages for us all to this zealous and, as he seems to you, faithful executor of his last wishes. Now what messages the other persons may have received we do not know. But you yourself received the following communications, both relating to the general course and conduct of your life. If there were others you suppress them. You were first informed that your life is approaching its end, and that but a few years remain to you.[2] Secondly, you were bidden to renounce the study of poetry. Hence your consternation and sorrow, which I shared at first as I read, but which a little reflection served to efface, as it will in your case too, if you will but lend me your ears, or listen to the utterances of your own better reason. You will see that, instead of being a source of grief, the message ought to give you joy.

I do not belittle the authority of prophecy. What comes to us from Christ must indeed be true. Truth itself cannot lie. But I venture to question whether Christ was the author of this particular prophecy, whether it may not be, as often happens, a fabrication attributed to him in order to insure its acceptance. And what of the fact that similar phenomena have been recorded among those who are quite ignorant of his name? If we may believe the pagan poets and philosophers, it was not at all unusual for dying men to utter prophecies; both the Greek literature and our own mention many such instances. Note, for example, that Homer makes Hector foretell the death of Achilles; Virgil tells us how Rhodes warns Mezentius of his doom; Cicero mentions the same prophetic power in the cases of Theramenes, who foresaw the death of Critias, and of Calanus, who foretold that of Alexander. Another example, more like that which troubles you, is mentioned by Posidonius, the most celebrated philosopher of his time. He tells us of a certain inhabitant of Rhodes who, on his death-bed, indicated six of his contemporaries who were shortly to follow him to the grave; and, what is more, he actually foretold the order in which those people would die. This is not the place to consider either the authenticity or the explanation of such cases. Suppose, though, that we do grant their trustworthiness, as well as that of other similar prophecies which are reported to us, including the one by which you have recently been terrified; what is there, after all, which need fill you with such apprehension? We are usually indifferent to those things with which we are familiar, and are excited and disturbed only by the unexpected. Did you not know well enough, without hearing it from this man, that you had but a short span of life before you?...[3]

I might commend to you, in your perplexity, the reflections of Virgil,[4] as not only helpful but as the only advice to be followed at this juncture, were it not that I wished to spare the ears of one to whom poetry is absolutely forbidden. This prohibition filled me with much more astonishment than the first part of the dying man's message. If it had been addressed to an old man who was, so to speak, just learning his letters, I might have put up with it, but I cannot understand why such advice should be given to an educated person in the full possession of his faculties, ... one who realises what can be derived from such studies for the fuller understanding of natural things, for the advancement of morals and of eloquence, and for the defence of our religion. (We have seen with what signal success those whom I have just enumerated[5] used their learning.) I am speaking now only of the man of ripe years, who knows what is due to Jupiter the adulterer, Mercury the pander, Mars the man-slayer, Hercules the brigand, and--to cite the less guilty--to the leech Æsculapius, and his father, Apollo the cither-player, to the smith Vulcan, the spinner Minerva; and, on the other hand, to Mary the virgin-mother, and to her son, our Redeemer, very God and very man. If, indeed, we must avoid the poets and other writers who did not know of Christ, and consequently do not mention his name, how much more dangerous must it be to read the books of heretics, who only speak of Christ to attack him. Nevertheless the defenders of the true faith do read them, and with the greatest attention.

Believe me, many things are attributed to gravity and wisdom which are really due to incapacity and sloth. Men often despise what they despair of obtaining. It is in the very nature of ignorance to scorn what it cannot understand, and to desire to keep others from attaining what it cannot reach. Hence the false judgments upon matters of which we know nothing, by which we evince our envy quite as clearly as our stupidity.

Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death. To desert our studies shows want of self-confidence rather than wisdom, for letters do not hinder but aid the properly constituted mind which possesses them; they facilitate our life, they do not retard it. Just as many kinds of food which lie heavy on an enfeebled and nauseated stomach furnish excellent nourishment for one who is well but famishing, so in our studies many things which are deadly to the weak mind may prove most salutary to an acute and healthy intellect, especially if in our use of both food and learning we exercise proper discretion. If it were otherwise, surely the zeal of certain persons who persevered to the end could not have roused such admiration. Cato, I never forget, acquainted himself with Latin literature as he was growing old, and Greek when he had really become an old man. Varro, who reached his hundredth year still reading and writing, parted from life sooner than from his love of study. Livius Drusus, although weakened by age and afflicted with blindness, did not give up his interpretation of the civil law, which he carried on to the great advantage of the state....

Besides these and innumerable others like them, have not all those of our own religion whom we should wish most to imitate devoted their whole lives to literature, and grown old and died in the same pursuit? Some, indeed, were overtaken by death while still at work reading or writing. To none of them, so far as I know, did it prove a disadvantage to be noted for secular learning, except to Jerome, whom I mentioned above; while to many, and Jerome himself not least, it was a source of glory. I do not forget that Benedict was praised by Gregory for deserting the studies which he had begun, to devote himself to a solitary and ascetic mode of life. Benedict, however, had renounced, not the poets especially, but literature altogether. Moreover, I very much doubt if his admirer would have been himself admired had he proceeded to adopt the same plan. It is one thing to have learned, another to be in the process of learning. It is only the hope of acquisition which the boy renounces,--quite a different thing from the learning itself, which an older person gives up; the former but turns away from an obstacle, while the latter sacrifices an ornament. The trials and uncertainties of acquisition are alone surrendered in one case; in the other the man sacrifices the sure and sweet fruit of long, laborious years, and turns his back upon the precious treasure of learning which he has gathered together with great effort.

While I know that many have become famous for piety without learning, at the same time I know of no one who has been prevented by literature from following the path of holiness. The apostle Paul was, to be sure, accused of having his head turned by study, but the world has long ago passed its verdict upon this accusation. If I may be allowed to speak for myself, it seems to me that, although the path to virtue by the way of ignorance may be plain, it fosters sloth. The goal of all good people is the same but the ways of reaching it are many and various. Some advance slowly, others with more spirit; some obscurely, others again conspicuously. One takes a lower, another a higher path. Although all alike are on the road to happiness, certainly the more elevated path is the more glorious. Hence ignorance, however devout, is by no means to be put on a plane with the enlightened devoutness of one familiar with literature. Nor can you pick me out from the whole array of unlettered saints, an example so holy that I cannot match it with a still holier one from the other group.

But I will trouble you no longer with these matters, as I have already been led by the nature of the subject to discuss them often. I will add only this: if you persist in your resolution to give up those studies which I turned my back upon so long ago, as well as literature in general, and, by scattering your books, to rid yourself of the very means of study,--if this is your firm intention, I am glad indeed that you have decided to give me the preference before everyone else in this sale. As you say, I am most covetous of books. I could hardly venture to deny that without being refuted by my works. Although I might seem in a sense to be purchasing what is already my own, I should not like to see the books of such a distinguished man scattered here and there, or falling, as will often happen, into profane hands. In this way, just as we have been of one mind, although separated in the flesh, I trust that our instruments of study may, if God will grant my prayer, be deposited all together in some sacred spot where they may remain a perpetual memorial to us both.[6] I came to this decision upon the day on which he died who I hoped might succeed me in my studies.[7] I cannot, however, fix the prices of the books, as you most kindly would have me do. I do not know their titles and number, or their value. You can arrange this by letter, and on the understanding that if it should ever occur to you to spend with me the little time which remains to us, as I have always wished, and you at one time seemed to promise, you will find the books you send with those that I have recently gathered together here, all of them equally yours, so that you will seem to have lost nothing, but rather gained, by the transaction.

Lastly, you assert that you owe money to many, to me among others. I deny that it is true in my case. I am surprised at so unfounded and even absurd a scruple of conscience on your part. I might apply Terence's saying, that you seem "to be looking for a joint in a reed." You owe me nothing but love, and not even that, since you long ago paid me in full,--unless it be that you always are owing, because you are always receiving. Still, one who pays back so promptly cannot properly be said ever to owe.

As to the complaint of poverty, which I have frequently heard from you before, I will not attempt to furnish any consolation or to cite any illustrious examples of indigence. You know them already. I will only say plainly what I have always said: I congratulate you for preferring liberty of mind and tranquil poverty to the opulence which I might have procured for you, even though tardily.[8] But I cannot praise you for scorning the oft-repeated invitation of a friend. I am not in a position to endow you. If I were, I should not confine myself to pen or words, but should address you with the thing itself. But I am amply supplied with all that two would need, if, with a single heart, they dwelt beneath a single roof. You insult me if you scorn my offers, still more so, if you are suspicious of their sincerity.

PADUA, May 28 (1362).

1: _Sen_., i, 4.

2: Boccaccio at this time was about fifty-one years old.

3: Here follows a series of reflections upon the brevity of life and the inevitability of death, supported by excerpts from Ambrose and Cicero. Petrarch often reverts to this subject in his letters.

4: To wit, the lines, "Stat sua cuique dies ... sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus."

5: _Viz_., Lactantius, Augustine, and Jerome.

6: In regard to Petrarch's library see above, pp. 28 _sqq_. "Each copy of a work had...)

7: It is not known to whom Petrarch refers here; de Nolhac suggests his son Giovanni, who died a year before this was written. _Cf. op. cit_., p. 68, note 1.

8: The pope had asked Petrarch to suggest someone for a papal secretaryship. He had offered the place to Boccaccio, who however refused it.

* * * * *

The following letter is one of Petrarch's most unreserved confessions of confidence in Christian asceticism.

_On a Religious Life._

_To his Brother Gherardo, a Carthusian Monk._[1]

Your double gift,--the boxwood box, which you yourself in your leisure moments had polished so carefully on the lathe, and the very edifying letter, built up and strengthened by a vast number of quotations from the Fathers, and testifying a truly religious spirit,--reached me yesterday evening. I was delighted to receive them both, but as I read the letter I was, I must confess, affected by strangely conflicting emotions, now warmed by generous impulses, now paralysed by chilling fear. Your admirable example aroused in me the longing to lead a better life, and supplied the incentive; it loosed the hold which the present exercised over me, enabling me to see more clearly where I really stood. You showed me the road which I must follow, and the distance which still separates me, miserable sinner that I am, from our other home, the New Jerusalem, for which we must always sigh, unless this dark and noisome dungeon of exile has destroyed all recollection of our true selves.

Well, I congratulate both of us,--you, that you have such a soul, myself, that I have such a brother. Yet, in spite of this, one thing fills me with pain and regret,--that while we had the same parents we should not have been born under the same star. We are sprung from the same womb; but how unlike, how unequal! This serves to show us that our natures are the gift, not of our earthly parents, but of our Eternal Father. We were begotten in carnal depravity by our father; to our mother we owe this vile body; but from God we receive our soul, our life, our intellect, our desire for good, our free will. All that is holy, religious, devout, or excellent in human nature comes directly from him.

So your letter at once comforted and distressed me. I rejoiced in you and blushed for myself. I can only say in reply to it that what you write is all very good and helpful, though it would have been quite as true even if you had not supported it so abundantly by high authorities. Take, for example, the opinion, which you call in St. Augustine to defend, that our endeavours, as well as our desires, are often at variance with one another.--I should like, however, if you will permit me, to express my own views upon this matter before coming to Augustine's. By so doing I shall gratify myself without, perhaps, annoying you.

The aims of mankind as a whole, and even those of the individual, are conflicting. This must be admitted; I know others and myself all too well to deny it. I have looked at the race as a whole, and have examined individuals in detail. What can, in truth, be said that will apply to all; or who can possibly enumerate the infinite diversities which distinguish mortals from one another, so that men do not seem to belong to the same species or even to the same genus?...[2] This, I confess, surprises me, but it is much more astonishing that the wishes of one and the same man should so ill agree. Who of us, indeed, desires the same thing when he is old that he craved as a youth? Or, what is still stranger, who wants in the winter what he wished in the summer? Nay, who of us would have to-day what we longed for yesterday, or this evening what we sought only this morning? As for that, we can see the vacillation from hour to hour, from minute to minute. Yes, there are more desires in man than minutes to realise them. This is a constant source of wonder to me, and I marvel that everyone should not find it so. But I am losing myself, and must return to you and your Augustine.

That the same individual may at the same moment be in disagreement with himself in regard to the same object--a truth which you call St. Augustine to witness, although you do not express yourself in exactly his words--is a source of the most profound astonishment to me. How common, nevertheless, is this species of madness,--to desire to continue our journey but without reaching the end, to wish to go and stay at the same time, to live and yet never die! Yet it is written in the Psalms, "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death?" Still, we harbour these contradictory desires. In our blindness and incredible perversity we yearn for life, and execrate its outcome, death. These wishes are, however, thoroughly at variance with each other, and mutually exclusive. Not only does death necessarily follow life, but, as Cicero says,--in whose opinion on this point I have, for some reason, almost more confidence than in that of Catholic writers,--" What we call our life is in reality death." So it falls out that we both hate and love death above all things, and are fitly described in the words of the comic poet,--_Volo nolo, nolo volo._

But let us leave aside for the time being these philosophical reflections, which, although perhaps inopportune, are none the less true, and deal with this matter as a common man might. Let us accept this life as it is generally conceived and so fondly cherished; let us suppose it to begin to-day--what does it really promise us? Surely anyone can readily infer the answer who reviews the experience of the years already passed, and uses the same measure for the future, although in his imagination he may extend his hopes and cares to a full century of life. What, may I ask, is the prospect for those who are already advanced in years? What is past is certainly dead and gone, and for the future we can only rely upon the assurances of a fleeting and precarious existence. Even if its promises should be fulfilled, the stubborn fact remains that the same number of years seems in old age, for some reason which I cannot explain, shorter than in the first part of our life. Who, then, can doubt the full truth of your assertions, that we are constantly occupied in a fervid quest for happiness and prosperous days, when neither happiness nor prosperous days are to be found? Nor can we hope for rest or safety, or life itself, or anything except a hard and weary journey toward the eternal home for which we look; or, if we neglect our salvation, an equally pleasureless way to eternal death. Should we not, then, seek our true welfare while we still have time, in the only place where the good and perfect can be found?

Of the other matter which you treat in so finished a manner in your