76 Petrarch at the Banquet 



that Petrarch was at the summit of his reputation, an ambassador 

 to the courts of kings, an adviser and exhorter of popes, sought 

 out by princes,^ scholars, ecclesiastics, and poets of eminence ; 

 (3.) that he was nearly 64 years old, and in failing health*'; and 

 (4) that Froissart was 30 years of age, and Chaucer still younger, 

 young men with nothing but unconsidered trifles to recommend 

 them,'^ the works by which they are universally known lying still 

 far in the future. 



'^ Cf . Mezieres, p. 2>77- 



"Korting, pp. 418, 437, 439, 442; cf. 405 ff. He wrote from a bed of 

 pain (doloris in lectulo) on Jan. 13, 1368, between 4 and 5 o'clock in the 

 morning (Korting, p. 418). 



''Hist. Background, p. 184; De Sade 3. 722. 



How wide was the difference between Chaucer's and Petrarch's judg- 

 ments of literature may be shown by one or two examples. 



Chaucer alludes with respect in the House of Fame (966 ff.) to the 

 Anticlaudianus of Alain de Lille, an author from whose Complaint of 

 Nature (see Moffat's translation) he draws in Pari, of Fowls 316 fif. 

 Petrarch, on the other hand, referring in his Apologia contra Galli Caliim- 

 nias to Alain's Anticlaudianus and to Jean de Hauteville's (fl. 1184) 

 Architrcnius (printed in Wright's Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epi- 

 grammatists of the Twelfth Century; cf. his Biog. Brit. Lit.: Anglo- 

 Norman Period, pp. 250-256), says of the Architrcnius: 'Of all that ever 

 I read, nothing was ever more tedious than that Architrcnius [wrongly 

 printed as Architrivio]. ... It gives the reader a nausea; it gives 

 him a headache; it makes him laugh. . . . The Anticlaudianus is only 

 a shade less wearisome than the Architrcnius. Both these barbaric poets 

 pour out floods of verbosity; both twist and struggle to no effect' (cf. 

 Nolhac, Petrarque et I'Humanisme, 2d ed., 2. 226-7). 



The best authorities assign Chaucer's translation (cf. Prol. L. G. IV. 

 255: 324) of the Roman de la Rose to his early manhood (Kittredge, 

 Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 60; Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 10; Root, 

 The Poetry of Chaucer, p. 56; Skeat, Oxford Chaucer i. Ixii ; Wells, p. 

 650), and so much of it as he translated ('apparently entire,' Kittredge 

 says) he had probably done before Lionel's journey. Of the Roman he 

 must have known long passages by heart (Kittredge, p. 61) before he 

 wrote the Book of the Duchess in 1369. Nothing more is necessary to 

 prove how highly Chaucer regarded the poem at this time. What was 

 Petrarch's estimate of it? Between 1360 and 1369 he addressed a poetical 

 epistle to Guido Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua (Mantuce domino), who had 

 requested Petrarch to send him the foremost work of French literature. 

 Petrarch thus characterizes the poem (translation condensed) : 



'How far Latin "surpasses all other tongues, Greek perhaps excepted, 

 you can learn from this little book, which France extols to the skies, 



