Chapter 14

Consider, Augustine urges in conclusion, not only the uncertainty of life and the imminence of death.

Think shame to yourself that you are pointed at and have become a subject of gossip with the common herd. Think how ill your morals harmonise with your profession. Think how your mistress hasinjured you in soul, body, and estate. Consider how much you have needlessly suffered for her sake. Think how often you have been deluded, despised, and neglected; what blandishments, tears, and lamentations you have poured out, and of the haughty, ungrateful arrogance with which she received them. If there was the least indication of humanity in her conduct, how trifling it was, more fleeting than the summer breeze. Consider how you have added to her fame and what she has taken from your life; how anxious you have been for her good name, how careless of your welfare she has always shown herself. Think how through her you have been alienated from the love of God.... Consider the useful and honourable tasks which you have so long neglected, the many incomplete works which lie before you and which demand your whole energy, not merely the odd moments which your passion leaves free.... If the honour of true glory does not attract you nor ignominy deter you, let the shame of others induce you to make a change in your life. You should guard your good name, if for no other reason, at least to save your friends the disgrace of telling lies for your sake.Lastly, what is it that you long for so ardently? Consider it intently, practically. Few there be who when once they have imbibed the sweet poison of desire, really manfully, I will not say consistently, dwell upon the foulness of woman's person. Their minds consequently easily relapse, under the pressure of nature, into the old habits. Forget the past. Importune heaven with your prayers and permit noday or night to pass without tearful supplication, for perchance Omnipotence may take compassion upon you and bring your trial to an end.[6]

Lastly, what is it that you long for so ardently? Consider it intently, practically. Few there be who when once they have imbibed the sweet poison of desire, really manfully, I will not say consistently, dwell upon the foulness of woman's person. Their minds consequently easily relapse, under the pressure of nature, into the old habits. Forget the past. Importune heaven with your prayers and permit noday or night to pass without tearful supplication, for perchance Omnipotence may take compassion upon you and bring your trial to an end.[6]

Augustine now turns to Francesco's longing for fame, which, with his passion for Laura, is the most inveterate and uncontrollable of his moral disorders. This yearning beyond measure for glory among men and an undying name may block his way to true immortality. He has no more grievous fault, although he may have uglier ones. What is fame? Nothing whatever but the general talk of the multitude about one; it is but a breath and, what is worse, the breath of the crowd. "I know whom I am addressing," Augustine continues.

You ordinarily regard nothing as more disgusting than the manners and doings of the common herd. What a want of consistency that you should habitually condemn the conduct of those whose chattering so delights you, nay more, to whom you look for the very consummation of your happiness! To what end are your unceasing labours, your tireless vigils, and excessive attention to study? You may answer that you are learning what will help you to live better. But you long ago learned all that was necessary for both life and death. You would, therefore, betterput the knowledge you have acquired into practice; better try experience rather than laborious ratiocination, which ever opens up new and inaccessible vistas; for there is no end to vain research. Recollect farther that you have given your attention to those things first and foremost which might be expected to gratify the public, and have sought to please them by a means especially distasteful to yourself, namely, by picking out from this poet and that historian such choice bits as might tickle the ears of your listeners.

This accusation naturally irritates the scholar, who has from boyhood scorned anthologies and favourite quotations. He cannot deny, however, that he does sometimes store up for the benefit of his friends and associates choice passages which he meets with. Augustine proceeds:

Not content with this daily occupation, which, although it took a great deal of time, promised you only a reputation among your contemporaries, you conceived of a fame which should reach posterity. Hence you undertook an historical work, covering the period from King Romulus to the Emperor Titus, a tremendous task requiring infinite patience and labour. Then, before this was done, infatuated by this craving for fame you set off on the wings of the poet for Africa. Now you diligently devote yourself to the several cantos of your poem by that name, without, however, giving up the other tasks,and so your life is divided into two great streams at least, not to speak of innumerable undercurrents. Prodigal of your most precious and irretrievable time, you write of others and forget yourself. Who knows but death may snatch the weary pen from your hand before either work is done?

The last source of apprehension is by no means new to Francesco.—He cannot bear to think of another laying hand to hisAfrica, and he confesses that in periods of bitter discouragement he has been on the point of burning the uncompleted manuscript. Augustine naturally recalls to him the melancholy truth that even if, granting the most favourable circumstances, he should succeed in producing a "rare and distinguished work," its fame could not reach far in time or space. Francesco impatiently asks to be spared the old trite reflections of the philosophers. "If you have anything better to urge, pray produce it; all this sounds very fine but I have never found that it helped me. I do not ask to be God and possess eternity and fill heaven and earth. Human glory is enough for me. I do long for that. I am a mortal and I desire only the mortal." To Augustine's horrified deprecation of such doctrine and his condemnation of the rashness of those who recklessly postpone theirsupreme interests to their last failing years, Francesco sturdily replies:

There is a certain justification for my plan of life. It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, so long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame. So this is the natural order, that among mortals the care of things mortal should come first; to the transitory will then succeed the eternal; from the first to the second is the natural progression.[7]

After this audacious and historically remarkable statement of the Humanists' creed, Francesco humbly asks if Augustine would have him forsake his studies altogether and lead an inglorious existence, or shall he pursue some middle course. His Confessor replies that we do not live inglorious lives although we follow, not fame but virtue; for true fame is but the shadow of virtue. "Throw off the burden of your proposedRoman History," Augustine exclaims, "lay aside yourAfrica, which cannot increase the fame of your Scipio or yourself.... Turn your thoughts upon Death! Let everything about you recall your pending fate. The heavens, the earth, and the sea all change; what chance that man, the weakestof creatures, should hold his own? Let the setting sun and the waning moon teach their lesson of mortality. Contemplate the graves of your friends.Hoc iter est in patriam."

Petrarch does not deny that this is wholesome advice, but he firmly refuses to give up his literary tasks, which he cannot with equanimity leave half done. He promises sedulously to die unto himself, and will hasten to complete his books in order to devote himself exclusively to religious contemplation. It will be seen that he found little to urge against Augustine's views, but that he nevertheless refused to follow his advice, except so far as he might do so without interfering with what he rightly considered his life's work.

So, without ability to defend completely the modern belief that earnest toil is presumably a far more rational preparation for death, than is a paralysing contemplation of its horrors, Petrarch still worked bravely on until the pen dropped from his hand. There is something noble and pathetic in this sturdy, unflagging industry in the face of the discomforting suggestions of monasticism. His life transcended and belied those ideals of his age from which in his less exuberant moments he was unable entirely to free himself.

[1]The following analysis of the Confessions was published in theRomanic Review, vol. i., Nos. 3-4, 1910. Since its appearance a complete English version of the little work has appeared,Petrarch's Secret, translated by William H. Draper, London, 1911.

[2]The classical termaegritudois scarcely more to the point than the mediæval expression. It is often used by Cicero in one of hisTusculan Disputations, but it is not the bitterness of spirit with which Petrarch suffered. Seneca's little work uponPeace of Mindmay, as Voigt has suggested, have influenced this portion of the Confessions. But while Petrarch resembled Seneca in more than one respect and was drawn to his writings by an obvious spiritual affinity, his personal experiences were far too genuine and spontaneous to require the example of another to bring them to light. No one can compare the Roman's treatise with the Confessions without quickly absolving Petrarch from any attempt consciously or unconsciously to imitate Seneca. Our conception of the nature of the poet's mental disquiet must be sought in the dialogue itself.

[3]See above, p.87sqq.

[4]The same idea is expressed in the canzone beginning, Perchè la vita.

[5]I.e.Simone Memrai.Cf.sonnet Per mirar.

[6]See above, page96, for reflections on Petrarch's attitude in this matter.

[7]The original words of this paragraph are given above, p.412.

Nulla calamo agilior est sarcina, nulla jucundior, voluptates aliæ fugiunt et mulcendo lædunt, calamus et in manus sumptus mulcet et depositus delectat, ac prodest non domino suo tantum sed aliis multis sæpe etiam absentibus, nonnunquam et posteris post annorum millorum.—Sen., xvi., 2.

To Boccaccio.[1]

...[2]I certainly will not reject the praise you bestow upon me for having stimulated in many instances, not only in Italy but perhaps beyond its confines also, the pursuit of studies such as ours, which have suffered neglect for so many centuries; I am, indeed, almost the oldest of those among us who are engaged in the cultivation of these subjects. But I cannot accept the conclusion you draw from this, namely, that I should give place to younger minds, and, interrupting the plan of work on which I am engaged, give others an opportunity to write something, if they will, and not seem longer to desire to reserve everything for my own pen. How radically do our opinions differ, although, at bottom, our object is the same! I seem to you to have written everything, or at least a great deal, while to myself I appear to have produced almost nothing.

But let us admit that I have written much, and shall continue to write;—what better means have I of exhorting those who are following my example tocontinued perseverance? Example is often more potent than words. The aged veteran Camillus, going into battle like a young man, assuredly aroused more enthusiasm in the younger warriors than if, after drawing them up in line of battle and telling them what was to be done, he had left them and withdrawn to his tent. The fear you appear to harbour, that I shall cover the whole field and leave nothing for others to write, recalls the ridiculous apprehensions which Alexander of Macedon is reported to have entertained, lest his father, Philip, by conquering the whole world, should deprive him of any chance of military renown. Foolish boy! He little realised what wars still remained for him to fight, if he lived, even though the Orient were quite subjugated; he had, perhaps, never heard of Papirius Cursor, or the Marsian generals. Seneca has, however, delivered us from this anxiety, in a letter to Lucilius, where he says, "Much still remains to be done; much will always remain, and even a thousand years hence no one of our descendants need be denied the opportunity of adding his something."

You, my friend, by a strange confusion of arguments, try to dissuade me from continuing my chosen work by urging, on the one hand, the hopelessness of bringing my task to completion, and by dwelling, on the other, upon the glory which I have already acquired. Then, after asserting that I have filled the world with my writings, you ask me if I expect to equal the number of volumes written by Origen or Augustine. No one, it seems tome, can hope to equal Augustine. Who, nowadays, could hope to equal one who, in my judgment, was the greatest in an age fertile in great minds? As for Origen, you know that I am wont to value quality rather than quantity, and I should prefer to have produced a very few irreproachable works rather than numberless volumes such as those of Origen, which are filled with grave and intolerable errors. It is certainly impossible, as you say, for me to equal either of these, although for very different reasons in the two cases. And yet you contradict yourself, for, though your pen invites me to repose, you cite the names of certain active old men,—Socrates, Sophocles, and, among our own people, Cato the Censor,—as if you had some quite different end in view. How many more names you might have recalled, except that one does not consciously argue long against himself! Searching desperately for some excuse for your advice and my weakness, you urge that perhaps their temperaments differed from mine. I readily grant you this, although my constitution has sometimes been pronounced very vigorous by those who claim to be experienced in such matters; still, old age will triumph.

You assert, too, that I have sacrificed a great deal of time in the service of princes. But that you may no longer labour under a delusion in this matter, here is the truth. I have lived nominally with princes, in reality, the princes lived with me. I was present sometimes at their councils, and, very rarely, at their banquets. I should never have submitted to any conditions which would, in any degree,have interfered with my liberty or my studies. When everyone else sought the palace, I hied me to the woods, or spent my time quietly in my room, among my books. To say that I have never lost a day would be false. I have lost many days (please God, not all) through inertia, or sickness, or distress of mind,—evils which no one is so fortunate as to escape entirely. What time I have lost in the service of princes you shall hear, for, like Seneca, I keep an account of my outlays.

First, I was sent to Venice to negotiate a peace between that city and Genoa, which occupied me for an entire winter month.[3]Next I betook myself to the extreme confines of the land of the barbarians,[4]and spent three summer months in arranging for peace in Liguria, with that Roman sovereign who fostered—or I had better say deferred,—the hope of restoring a sadly ruined Empire. Finally, I went to France[5]to carry congratulations to King John on his deliverance from an English prison; here three more winter months were lost. Although during these three journeys I dwelt upon my usual subjects of thought, nevertheless, since I could neither write down my ideas nor impress them on my memory, I call those days lost. It is true that when I reached Italy, on my return from the last expedition, I dictated a voluminous letter on the variableness of fortune to a studious old man, Peterof Poitiers; it arrived too late, however, and found him dead. Here, then, are seven months lost in the service of princes; nor is this a trifling sacrifice, I admit, considering the shortness of life. Would that I need not fear a greater loss, incurred long ago by the vanity and frivolous employments of my youth!

You add, further, that possibly the measure of life was different in olden times from what it is in ours, and that nowadays we may regard men as old who were then looked upon as young. But I can only reply to you as I did recently to a certain lawyer in this university,[6]who, as I learned, was accustomed to make that same assertion in his lectures, in order to depreciate the industry of the ancients, and excuse the sloth of our contemporaries. I sent by one of his students to warn him against repeating the statement, unless he wished to be considered an ignoramus by scholars. For more than two thousand years there has been no change in the length of human life. Aristotle lived sixty-three years. Cicero lived the same length of time; moreover, although he might have been spared longer had it pleased the heartless and drunken Antony, he had some time before his death written a great deal about his unhappy and premature decline, and had composed a treatise onOld Age, for the edification of himself and a friend. Ennius lived seventy years, Horace the same time, while Virgil died at fifty-two, a brief life even for our time. Plato, it is true, lived to be eighty-one; but this, it is said, was looked upon as a prodigy, and because he had attained themost perfect age the Magi decided to offer him a sacrifice, as if he were superior to the rest of mankind. Yet nowadays we frequently see in our cities those who have reached this age; octogenarians and nonagenarians are often to be met with, and no one is surprised, or offers sacrifices to them. If you recall Varro to me, or Cato, or others who reached their hundredth year, or Gorgias of Leontium who greatly exceeded that age, I have other modern instances to set off against them. But as the names are obscure I will mention only one, Romualdo of Ravenna, a very noted hermit, who recently reached the age of one hundred and twenty years, in spite of the greatest privations, suffered for the love of Christ, and in the performance of numerous vigils and fasts such as you are now doing all in your power to induce me to refrain from. I have said a good deal about this matter in order that you may neither believe nor assert that, with the exception of the patriarchs, who lived at the beginning of the world, and who, I am convinced, developed no literary activity whatever, any of our predecessors enjoyed greater longevity than ourselves. They could boast of greater activity, not of a longer life,—if, indeed, life without industry deserves to be called life at all, and not a slothful and useless delay.

By a few cautious words, however, you avoid the foregoing criticism, for you admit that it may not be a question of age after all, but that it may perhaps be temperament, or possibly climate, or diet, or some other cause, which precludes me from doing what the others were all able to do. I freely concedethis, but I cannot accept the deduction you draw from it, and which you support with laboriously elaborate arguments; for some of your reasons are, in a certain sense, quite opposed to the thesis you would prove. You counsel me to be contented—I quote you literally—with having perhaps equalled Virgil in verse (as you assert) and Cicero in prose. Oh, that you had been induced by the truth, rather than seduced by friendship, in saying this! You add that, in virtue of a senatus consultum following the custom of our ancestors, I have received the most glorious of titles, and the rare honour of the Roman laurel. Your conclusion from all this is that, with the happy results of my studies, in which I rival the greatest, and with my labours honoured by the noblest of prizes, I should leave off importuning God and man, and rest content with my fate and the fulfilment of my fondest wishes. Certainly I could make no objection to this if what your affection for me has led you to believe were true, or were even accepted by the rest of the world; I should gladly acquiesce in the opinions of others, for I should always rather trust their judgment than my own. But your view is not shared by others, and least of all by myself, who am convinced that I have rivalled no one, except, perhaps, the common herd, and rather than be like it I should choose to remain entirely unknown.

As for the laurel wreath, it encircled my brow when I was as immature in years and mind as were its leaves. Had I been of riper age I should not have desired it. The aged love what is practical,while impetuous youth longs only for what is dazzling. The laurel brought me no increase of learning or literary power, as you may well imagine, while it destroyed my peace by the infinite jealousy it aroused. I was punished for my youthful audacity and love of empty renown; for from that time well-nigh everyone sharpened his tongue and pen against me. It was necessary to be constantly on the alert with banners flying, ready to repel an attack, now on the left, now on the right; for jealousy had made enemies of my friends. I might narrate in this connection many occurrences which would fill you with astonishment. In a word, the laurel made me known only to be tormented; without it, I should have led that best of all lives, as many deem, a life of obscurity and peace.

You put the finishing touch to your argument, it seems to me, when you urge me to do all that I can to prolong my life as a joy to my friends, and first and foremost as a solace to you in your declining years, because, as you say, you desire when you depart hence to leave me still alive. Alas! our friend Simonides[7]also expressed this wish—a wish but too speedily granted: if there were any order in human affairs, it is he who should have survived me. My own desires are, however, directly opposed to those which my friends—you in particular—harbour. Ishould prefer to die while you are all still alive, and leave those behind in whose memory and conversation I should still live, who would aid me by their prayers, and by whom I should continue to be loved and cherished. Except a pure conscience, I believe there is no solace so grateful to the dying as this.

If your counsels spring from the belief that I cling tenaciously to life, you are entirely mistaken. Why should I wish to prolong my existence among customs and manners which make me constantly deplore that I have fallen on such times? To omit more serious disorders, I am afflicted by the perverted and indecent clothing of a most frivolous set of men. I have already too often complained of them, both in speech and writing, but words are powerless to quiet my indignation and distress of mind. These fellows, who call themselves Italians, and were, indeed, born in Italy, do all they can to appear like barbarians. Would that they were barbarians, that my eyes and those of the true Italians might be delivered from so shameful a spectacle! May God Omnipotent confound them, living and dead! Not satisfied with sacrificing by their pusillanimity the virtues of our ancestors, the glory of war, and all the arts of peace, they dishonour in their frenzy the speech and dress of our country, so that we may consider our forefathers happy to have passed away in good time, and may envy even the blind, who are spared the sight of these things.

Finally, you ask me to pardon you for venturingto advise me and for prescribing a mode of life, namely, that I hereafter abstain from mental exertion and from my customary labours and vigils, and endeavour to restore, by complete rest and sleep, the ravages wrought by advancing years and prolonged study. I will not pardon you, but I thank you, well aware of the affection which makes you a physician for me, although you refuse to be one for yourself. I beg, however, that you will obey me, although I refuse to obey you, and will let me persuade you that, even if I were most tenacious of life, which I am not, I should assuredly only die the sooner if I followed your advice. Continued work and application form my soul's nourishment. So soon as I commenced to rest and relax I should cease to live. I know my own powers. I am not fitted for other kinds of work, but my reading and writing, which you would have me discontinue, are easy tasks, nay, they are a delightful rest, and relieve the burden of heavier anxieties. There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen. Other pleasures fail us, or wound us while they charm; but the pen we take up rejoicing and lay down with satisfaction, for it has the power to advantage not only its lord and master, but many others as well, even though they be far away,—sometimes, indeed, though they be not born for thousands of years to come. I believe that I speak but the strict truth when I claim that as there is none among earthly delights more noble than literature, so there is none so lasting, none gentler, or more faithful; there is none which accompanies itspossessor through the vicissitudes of life at so small a cost of effort or anxiety.[8]

Pardon me then, my brother, pardon me. I am disposed to believe anything that you say, but I cannot accept your opinion in this matter. However you may describe me (and nothing is impossible to the pen of a learned and eloquent writer), I must still endeavour, if I am a nullity, to become something; if already of some account, to become a little more worthy; and if I were really great, which I am not, I should strive, so far as in me lay, to become greater, even the greatest. May I not be allowed to appropriate the magnificent reply of that fierce barbarian who, when urged to spare himself continued exertions, since he already enjoyed sufficient renown, responded, "The greater I am, the greater shall be my efforts"? Words worthy of another than a barbarian! They are graven on my heart, and the letter which follows this[9]will show you how far I am from following your exhortations to idleness. Not satisfied with gigantic enterprises, for which this brief life of ours does not suffice, and would not if doubled in length, I am always on the alert for new and uncalled-for undertakings,—so distasteful to me is sleep and dreary repose. Do you not know that passage from Ecclesiasticus, "When man has finished his researches, he is but at the beginning, and when he rests, then doth he labour"? I seem tomyself to have but begun; whatever you and others may think, this is my verdict. If in the meanwhile the end, which certainly cannot be far off, should come, I would that it might find me still young. But as I cannot, in the nature of things, hope for that, I desire that death find me reading and writing,[10]or, if it please Christ, praying and in tears.

Farewell, and remember me. May you be happy and persevere manfully.

PADUA, April 28 (1373).

[1]Sen., xvi., 2.

[2]The first half of the letter is omitted.

[3]In 1353.

[4]That is, to Prague in 1356.

[5]In 1360. All three missions were undertaken for the dukes of Milan.

[6]Of Padua.

[7]I.e., Francesco Nelli, Prior of the church of Santi Apostoli at Florence. He died of the plague in 1363. Not only did Petrarch dedicate hisLetters of Old Ageto Nelli, but of the letters preserved, he addresses a greater number (thirty-five) to him than to any other of his correspondents.

[8]Cf. John of Salisbury's Prologue to hisPolicraticusfor a much earlier description of the pure joys of literature.

[9]Presumably that which contained the translation of Boccaccio's story of Griselda. See above, pp.191sqq.

[10]A letter from a contemporary, Manzini de la Motta (July 1, 1388), thus describes Petrarch's end: "Francesco Petrarca, the mirror of our century, after completing a vast array of volumes, on reaching his seventy-first year, closed his last day in his library. He was found leaning over a book as if sleeping, so that his death was not at first suspected by his household."—Quoted by Fracassetti,Let. delle Cose Fam., vol. ii., p. 348.

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