PETRARCH ITHE AUTHOR 



mere perversity that leads one to lay stress upon these 

 spots on a very bright sun. One does so because no 

 other Italian poet has exercised such an influence upon 

 Itahan verse, not to speak of the poetry of other coun- 

 tries; and that influence has been generally baleful, 

 because the inferior but popular copyists have imitated 

 Petrarch's worst qualities, being quite unfit to reproduce 

 the real beauties of one who stands, after all, among the 

 grand poets of the world. 



In the case of Petrarch more than in that of Dante or 

 of other leaders of men, we feel the need of striking a 

 balance of all his works. There was in him so much that 

 was petty, that it is dangerously easy to forget how 

 really great he was. A number of the minor things he 

 did would be sufficient to give him a conspicuous place 

 in the history of the Renaissance: the first humanist 

 comedy, the first Renaissance epic on classic fines, the 

 first important body of bucolic verse, the prose letters; 

 the interest he showed in nature, in geography, in 

 traveUing (the Itinerarium) \ his love for collecting 

 books and his desire to found a public library; his com- 

 parative independence as a scholar, his discrimination in 

 the use of authorities, and his judicial attitude toward 

 scholasticism — a trait very significant of new times. To 

 these are to be added greater things: his passion for elo- 

 quence, his use of it as a touchstone in Hterary criticism, 

 and his own remarkable mastery of it, not so much in 

 Latin prose (though here he was a teacher and an 

 example to men who justified their study of eloquence 



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