PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



and application are the food of my mind. When I begin 

 to relax and seek repose, be assured that I shall cease to 

 Hve." This is admirable; and we can forgive him 

 much when he has the manhness (referring to his many 

 battles) to cry out mea culpa: " I have sinned much; 

 my letters full of repining and lamentation prove that. 

 I blush, and wish I had never written them." 



In his complaints, however, he was by no means 

 always in the wrong: his letters against the medical 

 practice of his day are very instructive. Entertaining 

 are his accounts of travel — travel, which, he says " is 

 really my custom, having become almost habitual.'' 

 Most interesting of all, perhaps, are a few bits of de- 

 scription — " homely matters,'' he might have called 

 them — which somehow bring back the past and place 

 it before our eyes. When standing up in defence of 

 Italy, and emphasizing the intolerable heat of southern 

 France, he says: "During the pontificate of John 

 XXII, I remember the skies to have been so blazing 

 and the penury of rain to have been so great, that the 

 common people, stripped to the waist, in a frenzy 

 rushed about through that Paradise of the cardinals, 

 beating their breasts and crying out for a drop of water 

 to fall from heaven and end their torment. I recall, 

 too, that nearly every summer the burned skin fell off 

 the faces, necks, and hands of both men and women 

 just as scales fall from a serpent. If any one remained 

 intact in that furnace, he was said to have been made 

 of iron." There is a pathetic description of Robert of 



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