PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



waste my labors and see the work of my hands levelled 

 by the common herd. Like one who finds a great 

 serpent across his path, I stopped and changed my 

 route for a higher and more direct one, I hope." 



Once again the question arises as to whether Petrarch 

 is giving us his real opinion when he says that Latin is 

 preferable to the vernacular. Was he not far more in 

 doubt than he would have us imagine, and, as he grew 

 older, did he not arrive at very much the same position 

 as that taken by Dante ? Here are some of the facts 

 which would seem to justify such an opinion. He not 

 only began his career as a writer of Itahan verse, but he 

 continued composing it until the very end of his life, in 

 spite of his statement that he stopped short in his path 

 and changed his route. About 1350, — when he was 

 no longer a young man and had already written his 

 Secretum and a part of his Africa, the work most in- 

 timately connected with his desire for fame, — he 

 wished to finish the " trifles," of which, years before, 

 he had started making a collection, abandoned because 

 of new plans. In other words, he desired to complete 

 his edition of the lyrics, in order to have a free hand for 

 the Triumphs, at which he was working; but he did not 

 succeed until 1359. This is the collection known as the 

 Chigi MS., No. 176. From 1360 to 1365 or 1366 there 

 is another interval, during which he thinks more of the 

 Triumphs and the works in Latin. In 1367 begins the 

 famous edition, a large part of which we have in his own 

 handwriting. This collection was destined for Pandolfo 



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