PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



But we may be certain that in one kind of lamentation 

 he is sincere. We can imagine that, in an age like his, 

 when people must have written for the ear as well as 

 for the eye, the ear was probably much more sensitive 

 than it is now; and we can picture what Petrarch 

 suffered, a torture described by him in the same oft- 

 quoted letter to Boccaccio. " This is not the least of 

 the considerations that have led me to give up a style 

 of composition to which I devoted myself in my early 

 years. I feared for my writings the same fate that I 

 had seen overtake those of others, especially of Dante. 

 I could not in my own case look for more musical 

 tongues or more flexible minds among the common 

 people than I noted in the rendering of those authors 

 whom long favor and habit have made popular in the 

 public squares. That my apprehensions were not idle 

 is clear from the fact that I am continually tortured by 

 the tongues of the people as they sing the few produc- 

 tions which I allowed to escape me in my youth. I in- 

 dignantly reject and hate what I once loved, and day 

 by day walk the streets with vexation, and execrate my 

 own talents. Everywhere I behold a crowd of ignorant 

 fellows, everywhere I find my Damoetas at the street 

 corner ready to murder with his screeching reed my 

 poor sonnet. Hearing again and again the perfor- 

 mances of those who mangle, rather than recite, the 

 works of others, and turning the matter over in my 

 mind, I concluded that I was building upon unstable 

 earth and shifting sand, and should, if I went on, simply 



8s 



