PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



III 



In addition to Latin prose works, Petrarch wrote much 

 verse in that language, and upon one of his Latin 

 poems he based his hopes of future fame. This is the 

 Africa. " While I was wandering in the mountains 

 upon a Friday in Holy Week," he says in his Letter to 

 Posterity, " the strong desire seized me to write an epic 

 in a heroic strain, taking as my theme Scipio Africanus 

 the Great who had, strange to say, been dear to me 

 from my childhood. This poem was christened Africa 

 from the name of its hero; and, either from its own 

 fortunes or from mine, it did not fail to arouse the 

 interest of many before they had seen it." This was 

 the poem he took with him to Naples to show King 

 Robert, when he wished to prove that he merited the 

 laurel at Rome. It was not complete; indeed, he never 

 succeeded in putting it into final shape. As we have it, 

 there are nine books, the considerable gaps showing 

 that it must have been longer in the author's plan. 

 Though Petrarch began it with such enthusiasm and 

 expected so much from it, the work was a source of 

 continual unhappiness; and the poet would have 

 suffered more, had he known what was to be its fate 

 after his death. The only part which he made pubHc 

 (apart from showing it to King Robert) was the last 

 thirty-four lines of the episode of Mago, in which that 

 hero laments the vicissitudes of fortune. This he sent 

 to his friend Barbato, who promised not to show it to 



