PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



Malatesta. Of some of the poems which make up the 

 Canzoniere he speaks in two letters addressed to the 

 same person, caUing them " Nugellas meas vulgares." 

 " Greatly against my will I confess it to you, now that 

 I am an old man: I published these trifles written in 

 my youth, which I now wish had never become known. 

 But how can I prevent it ? For a long time they have 

 been in the hands of many, and are read more willingly 

 than works composed when I was more mature in 

 mind/' For the crudity of the style he apologises on 

 the ground that most of these poems were done when 

 he was young, saying (Var,, 9; cf. Sen., xiii, 10): "if 

 you find many errors, I beg you to pardon me, because 

 of the infinite things which take up my time and which 

 have forced me to hand over the revision to others." 

 But he goes on to admit: " I have still many more of 

 these vernacular poems written on sheets so torn and 

 blurred that it is difiicult to read them. And when, 

 from time to time, I have a day's leisure, I amuse my- 

 self by mending them." This much, at least, is evident 

 from the letters and from the facts enumerated, that 

 at the close of his life, as well as at the beginning, 

 Petrarch was occupied to some extent with the ver- 

 nacular. He acknowledges, just before his death, the 

 great popularity of his Italian poems. Not merely does 

 he prepare an authoritative edition of his love songs, 

 but it is clear that he desires to appeal to the erudite as 

 well as the ordinary reader. This desire is evident in 

 the title which he gives to his allegorical poems in terza 



87 



