PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



using it as a criterion to establish the relative value of 

 different works which reveal it in varying degrees, con- 

 stituted one of the most fruitful movements initiated 

 by Petrarch. At the same time, this search and this 

 use restored Hterary criticism at the very end of the 

 Middle Ages, which had lacked it." 



Curious it is to see how Petrarch applies this test of 

 eloquence, not merely to purely literary works, but to 

 matters which lie rather outside. One of his reasons for 

 espousing the cause of Plato rather than that of Aris- 

 totle was that the latter was not eloquent. In his 

 polemics against the lawyers, he declares that the study 

 of law has degenerated since the days when it was 

 associated with eloquence. In his controversy with 

 the Averroists, he reproaches them, not for their 

 contempt of Christianity nor their scorn of Plato, but 

 for their disdain of the masters of beautiful speech. 

 " What shall we say,'' he asks {Sen., v, 2), " of men who 

 scorn Marcus Tullius Cicero, the bright sun of elo- 

 quence; of those who scoff at Varro and Seneca, and 

 are scandalized at what they are pleased to call the 

 crude, unfinished style of Livy and Sallust ? Once I 

 happened to be present when Virgil's style was the 

 subject of their scornful criticism. Amazed at the 

 crazy outbreak, I turned to a person of some cultiva- 

 tion and asked what he had detected in this famous 

 man to arouse such a storm of reproach. Listen to the 

 reply he made me, with a contemptuous shrug of his 

 shoulders: ^ He is too fond of conjunctions.' " Such 



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