PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



concerned, leaving aside the veneration of a man's con- 

 temporaries, there were two ample rewards, after death 

 beatitude above, and on earth the canonization which 

 the Church can bestow. So far as deeds of valor were 

 concerned, great fighters of whatever rank were amply 

 able with their own hands to win fame which should 

 at least accompany them in their lifetime. But now 

 comes one who takes up the cause of pure letters, which 

 for centuries had been regarded as vain or worldly. The 

 poet, the man of letters, a vastly more important per- 

 sonage than the singer of the guild or the troubadour, 

 wins his meed of glory and something more. The secular 

 world is ennobled, and within it no power, not even the 

 emperor's, can bestow a gift comparable to that which 

 the poet has at his disposal. The emperor can accord 

 wealth and crowns, the poet immortality. Brave men 

 lived before Agamemnon, Horace declares. " They 

 had no poet, and they died." The poet can even canon- 

 ize whom he chooses, and indeed may secure his own 

 halo, as did Petrarch. And this coronation must be a 

 function of pomp and circumstance, no longer a mere 

 local affair, as it was with Mussato and as it might have 

 been with Dante; it must possess a more universal 

 character and be celebrated in the city which had been 

 for centuries the home of a glorious universal Uterature, 

 where other crowns had been conferred. In his search 

 for self-glorification Petrarch was Uke Saul, who went 

 out to look for the asses of his father Kish, and obtained 

 the kingdom of Israel. He won from the world and for 



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