PETRARCH THE MAN 



Jerome, and Rousseau) we are often repelled by his 

 pettiness. This we see in his disputes with his contem- 

 poraries. Even when his cause is good, he is guilty, 

 like so many later humanists, of treating his opponents 

 not merely as mistaken men, but as personal enemies, 

 who desire to tarnish his fame; and his shrill, passionate 

 self-defence, while not so bad as the furious invective of 

 Poggio and Valla, does him no credit. One thing is 

 worse, and that is his mock humility; compared wdth 

 an affected meekness that sounds frequently like 

 whining, the invectives of the humanists just mentioned 

 are like exhilarating peals of artillery. 



II 



But, leaving this subject, let us consider Petrarch's 

 attitude towards solitude and nature, towards Dante, 

 towards friends, towards Gloria and Laura; and let 

 us begin with the first. It was, as has been said, some- 

 thing new for a man to devote himself to pure letters as 

 his life's work; it was also something new for a man to 

 seek retirement in the country for the reasons which 

 prompted Petrarch. Many men before him had left 

 the city and gone into some retreat to avoid temptation, 

 to have an opportunity to give themselves up to reli- 

 gious meditation; but for them a desert would have an- 

 swered as well as Vaucluse, or even better. Petrarch's 

 fondness for this place finds its parallel in the love of 

 Horace, Cicero, and other Romans for their country 

 villas, and a suspicious person might ask: did Petrarch 



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