PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



in his Old Age (Sen, xvi, i) that he lent it to his old 

 teacher Convenevole, who had become very poor and 

 who needed it for his work; but unfortunately the old 

 man pawned it, and it was never recovered. This story 

 is told with much circumstantial detail; yet it is almost 

 certain that Petrarch never possessed a copy. Voigt 

 thinks that perhaps he had found such a title at the 

 head of some chapters of the Tusctdan Disputations. 

 Nolhac is incUned to beheve that Petrarch was the 

 victim of his own imagination: he did lend books to 

 Convenevole; he had noticed somewhere some fine 

 passages on Glory, and, having learned subsequently 

 that Cicero had composed a work on that subject (dear 

 to him above all others), he wondered in after years 

 whether he had not possessed it, until he finally con- 

 vinced himself that he had. But if he really had owned 

 it, it is almost certain that he would have said so long 

 before; and he surely would have remembered more 

 about it. 



There is another favorite, to whom indeed Petrarch 

 did not surrender himself with quite such self-abandon- 

 ment, yet with whom he had so much in common that 

 after his death he was called — by one scholar, at least 

 — the modem Seneca. Petrarch particularly enjoyed 

 the moralizing of Seneca, and, as I have said, this fond- 

 ness to a considerable extent spoiled his letters. He 

 could not get away from Seneca's influence, even when 

 he wished to, or thought he had succeeded. He im- 

 agined he derived consolation from reading Seneca's 



