PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



prevalent hope that Rienzi^s reputation as a poet 

 might save him from violence, he declares: " If Cola 

 can, in such imminent peril, find shelter beneath the 

 poet's aegis, why should not Virgil escape in the same 

 way ? Yet Virgil would certainly have perished at the 

 hands of the same judges, because he is held to be, not 

 a poet, but a magician. Let me tell you one thing which 

 will amuse you more: I myself, than whom no one has 

 been more hostile to divination and magic, have been 

 occasionally pronounced a magician, by quite as acute 

 judges, on account of my fondness for Virgil. How 

 very low have our studies sunk! " In this passage, 

 Petrarch, laughing at a senseless medieval superstition 

 from which he was quite free, seems like one of us 

 modems; but at the same time it is very doubtful 

 whether, for all his Hterary taste, he actually appre- 

 ciated those qualities which to us are the real beauties 

 of Virgil. For instance, he seems to regard as partic- 

 ularly fine those passages which impress us as being 

 the most rhetorical. In this, of course, he is no worse 

 than many of the later Romans, for whom poetry was 

 a rhetorical exercise. With that favorite theme of dis- 

 putations in the late Empire, — '' Was Virgil greater 

 as orator or as poet ? " — we might compare a remark 

 of Petrarch's: " Our beloved Cicero is beyond doubt 

 the father of Latin eloquence. Next to him comes 

 Virgil; or, perhaps, since there are some who dislike 

 the order in which I place them, I had better say that 

 Tully and Maro are the two parents of Roman litera- 



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