PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



on his travels. Of the difficulties he encounters, he has 

 a great deal to say. '^ Those fellows," he declares {Sen., 

 V, i), " are verily the plague of noble minds. A work 

 written in a few months cannot be copied in as many 

 years. Such is the ignorance and laziness, the arro- 

 gance of these fellows, that, strange as it may seem, they 

 do not reproduce what you give them, but write out 

 something quite different." So, even when oppressed 

 by worries and difficulties, he finds it necessary (Fam., 

 XVIII, 12) to press his weary fingers and his worn and 

 ragged pen into service, and copy a Cicero lent him by 

 his friend Lapo Castiglionchio, consoling himself with 

 the thought that there was one more point of contact 

 between himself and Cicero, the fact that both had had 

 to submit to just such drudgery. In his youth he had 

 made a number of journeys to obtain old books. Al- 

 ready he had laid the foundations of his collection at 

 Avignon — which perhaps was not quite so badly off 

 as he describes. In Paris he visited the library of the 

 Sorbonne — Paris, which his friend, Richard de Bury, 

 called the Paradise of the world, because of the oppor- 

 tunities it offered to men of his tastes. In Belgium he 

 went about visiting convents, where he found books new 

 to him, copying (he had great difficulty in obtaining 

 ink at Liege), and adding to his stores. Naturally Italy 

 is the most delightful hunting-ground, especially Rome. 

 He describes himself travelling about with his baggage 

 of books, cumbersome enough but a delight to his eyes. 

 As, in spite of all his travelling, he could not be ubiqui- 



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