PETRARCH THE AUTHOR 



marks because in no single case anywhere is the con- 

 tradiction between the pretended purpose of the pas- 

 toral and the achievement more glaring. No pastoral 

 poems are more artificial than these, written though 

 they be by a sincere lover of nature who called himself 

 a " citizen of the woods.'' But in spite of their artificial- 

 ity they are still worth reading, and not merely for the 

 history of the pastoral, but because they have some- 

 thing to say about Laura, and because, here and there, 

 the poet's love of nature appears thinly veiled, if veiled 

 at all. 



Fortimately these poems are easily accessible, not 

 merely in Avena's edition with a commentary, but also 

 in the old one of Rossetti with an ItaHan translation. 

 In that same collection of Poesie Minori del Petrarca 

 are found also the most attractive of his Latin verses, 

 his poetical epistles. One of these is addressed to 

 Virgil, another to Horace, others to his friends. One of 

 these it is that contains the strange and significant 

 passage in which Petrarch speaks of Laura as an 

 obsession. 



IV 



With all Petrarch's learning, one great field of classical 

 scholarship and literature, the Greek, remained virtu- 

 ally unknown to him — not, of course, through his own 

 fault. Just how he would have appreciated it, had he 

 known it as well as the Latin, we of course cannot say. 

 Being ignorant of it, he considered it inferior to the 



