PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



the world full recognition of the individual humanist, the 

 individual man of letters. 



II 



To the great majority of readers of Petrarch's verse his 

 Latin works are unknown, but some of these writings 

 deserve a better fate and should be rescued from ob- 

 livion. This is particularly true of the Secretum and 

 certain Latin epistles and sundry passages in the Ec- 

 logues, of which no lover of the Canzoniere can afford to 

 be ignorant. And then there are the letters, which 

 should appeal to an even larger circle. If men of to-day 

 in no way conspicuous for their talents find willing 

 listeners when they narrate their recollections and im- 

 pressions, simply because they have seen much of the 

 world and possess a certain power of observation and a 

 facile pen, the correspondence of Petrarch should indeed 

 be a land of promise. In this case the writer is not 

 merely one of the most famous men of letters that have 

 ever lived; he is also one who was deeply interested in 

 everything that took place about him, and whose good 

 fortune it was to Hve in a supremely absorbing period of 

 Italy's history, the age which witnessed the Babylonian 

 captivity of the popes, the rise of the Italian despots, 

 and the change from the Middle Ages to the Renais- 

 sance. Though he affected retirement, we know what 

 an insatiable traveller he was, and what an indefati- 

 gable cultivator of friendships. One cannot glance 

 casually over the Kst of his correspondents without 



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