PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



And therefore, while attention would still naturally be 

 called, by a latter-day Latinist, to Petrarch's deviations 

 from classical usage, most modern critics would ac- 

 knowledge that the fourteenth century scholar had 

 succeeded in fashioning for himself a really excellent 

 style. Easy, supple, often graceful, always pleasant to 

 read, it possesses what Dante calls the special excellence 

 of Latin, ability to make known the concepts of the 

 writer. 



As important as Petrarch's style itself is his theory 

 concerning style in general. In some of his literary 

 principles he is still medieval; but on this question he 

 can be very modem and sensible. Just as, for centuries, 

 Latin was engaged in a life and death struggle with the 

 vernacular, so, in the narrower field of Latin itself, 

 there was, for generations, a constant duel between the 

 Ciceronians and the anti-Ciceronians. Petrarch saw 

 that the great danger in writing Latin was slavish imita- 

 tion; and in what he has to say about imitation and 

 individuality he appears at his very best as a literary 

 critic. On one occasion, writing to Boccaccio {Fam.y 

 XXIII, 19), he tells of a companion of his, a young man 

 of great promise, who, as a result of his experiments, 

 is to fashion a style of his own. To win success, he 

 must avoid imitation, — or, better, conceal it, — so as 

 to give the impression, not of copying, but rather of 

 bringing to modern Italy, from the writers of old, some- 

 thing new. An imitator must see to it that what he 

 writes, though similar, be not the very same. Literary 



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