Chapter 7

[1]Sen., v., 3. Written, Fracassetti believes, about 1366.

[2]Juvenal, vii., 87.

[3]A trifling poem once universally attributed to Virgil.

[4]It is not known who is meant here.Cf.Fracassetti,Lettere Senile, vol. i., p. 283.

[5]Machiavelli'sPrince, chap, xii., contains a similar description of war in his day.

[6]Luther reports that in his time, in Rome, they called an earnest believer "bon Christian."

[7]Who was fined for speaking against the Roman people.

[8]A corruption of the Arabic name of Ibn Roschd, who died in 1198.

[9]For this whole matter see Renan's charming book,Averroes.Also, Reuter'sReligiöse Aufklärung des Mittelalters.

[10]Especially remarkable in this connection is the curious workDe Suiipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia, the origin of which may be briefly described. A group of Petrarch's young Averroist friends happened one day in a post-prandial conversation to discuss among themselves his real claim to distinction. They decided that his fame rested largely upon the mistaken and ill-judged attentions of popes and princes, and that, although a good man, he could not be regarded as a person of great knowledge or literary power. This frank estimate of his ability reached the ears of Petrarch and naturally irritated the now failing old man, accustomed for many years to the world's adulation. The reply, written a year later, shows unmistakable signs of wounded pride and vanity. The criticism of the young men was, he assumes, dictated purely by envy of his reputation. He is indeed ignorant, but others are still more hopelessly benighted—hence the title, Of His Own Ignorance and That of Others.Opera(1581), pp., 1035-1059.

[11]See above, pp.37sqq.

To Tomasso da Messina[1]

It is hazardous to engage an enemy who longs rather for battle than for victory. You write to me of a certain old logician who has been greatly excited by my letter, as if I condemned his art. With a growl of rage, he loudly threatened to make war in turn upon our studies, in a letter for which, you say, you have waited many months in vain. Do not wait longer; believe me, it will never come. He retains some traces of decency, and this is a confession that he is ashamed of his style or an acknowledgment of his ignorance. The most implacable in contests with the tongue will not resort to the pen. They are reluctant to show how ill-armed they are,and so follow the Parthian system of warfare, carried on during a rapid retreat, by letting fly a shower of winged words and committing their shafts to the wind.

It is foolhardy, as I have said, to accept an engagement with these fellows upon their own terms. It is indeed from the fighting itself that they derive their chief pleasure; their object is not to discover the truth, but to prolong the argument. But you know Varro's proverb: "Through over-long contention the truth is lost." You need not fear, then, that these warriors will come out into the open fields of honest discussion, whether with tongue or pen. They belong to the class of whom Quintilian speaks in hisInstitutes of Oratory, whom one finds wonderfully warm in disputation, but once get them away from their cavilling, they are as helpless, in a serious juncture, as certain small animals which are active enough in a narrow space, but are easily captured in a field. Hence their reluctance to engage in an open contest. As Quintilian goes on to say, their tergiversations indicate their weakness; they seek, like an indifferent runner, to escape by dodging.

This is what I would impress upon you, my friend; if you are seeking virtue or truth, avoid persons of that stripe altogether. But how shall we escape from these maniacs, if even the isles of the sea are not free from them? So neither Scylla nor Charybdis has prevented this pest from finding its way into Sicily?[2]Nay, this ill is now ratherpeculiar to islands, as we shall find if we add the logicians of Britain to the new Cyclopes about Ætna. Is this the ground of the striking similarity between Sicily and Britain, which I have seen mentioned in Pomponius Mela'sCosmographia?I had thought that the resemblance lay in the situation of the countries, the almost triangular appearance of both, and perhaps in the perpetual contact which each enjoys with the surrounding sea. I never thought of logicians; I had heard of the Cyclopes, and then of the tyrants, both savage inhabitants; but of the coming of this third race of monsters, armed with two-edged arguments, and fiercer than the burning shores of Taormina itself, I was unaware.

There is one thing which I myself long ago observed, and of which you now warn me anew. These logicians seek to cover their teachings with the splendour of Aristotle's name; they claim that Aristotle was wont to argue in the same way. They would have some excuse, I readily confess, if they followed in the steps of illustrious leaders, for even Cicero says that it would give him pleasure to err with Plato, if err he must. But they all deceive themselves. Aristotle was a man of the most exalted genius, who not only discussed but wrote upon themes of the very highest importance. How can we otherwise explain so vast an array of works, involving such prolonged labour, and prepared with supreme care amid such serious preoccupations—especially those connected with the guardianship of his fortunate pupil—and within the compass, too, of a life by no means long?—for he died at about sixty-three,the age which all writers deem so unlucky. Now why should these fellows diverge so widely from the path of their leader? Why is not the name of Aristotelians a source of shame to them rather than of satisfaction, for no one could be more utterly different from that great philosopher than a man who writes nothing, knows but little, and constantly indulges in much vain declamation? Who does not laugh at their trivial conclusions, with which, although educated men,[3]they weary both themselves and others? They waste their whole lives in such contentions. Not only are they good for nothing else, but their perverted activity renders them actually harmful. Disputations such as they delight in are made a subject of mirth by Cicero and Seneca, in several passages. We find an example in the case of Diogenes, whom a contentious logician addressed as follows: "What I am, you are not." Upon Diogenes conceding this, the logician added, "But I am a man." As this was not denied, the poor quibbler propounded the conclusion, "Therefore you are not a man." "The last statement is not true," Diogenes remarked, "but if you wish it to be true, begin with me in your major premise." Similar absurdities are common enough with them. What they hope to gain from their efforts, whether fame or amusement, or some light upon the way to live righteously and happily, they may know; to me, Iconfess, it is the greatest of mysteries. Money, certainly, does not appeal at least to noble minds as a worthy reward of study. It is for the mechanical trades to strive for lucre; the higher arts have a more generous end in view.

On hearing such things as these, those of whom we are speaking grow furious;—indeed the chatter of the disputatious man usually verges closely on anger. "So you set yourself up to condemn logic," they cry. Far from it; I know-well in what esteem it was held by that sturdy and virile sect of philosophers, the Stoics, whom our Cicero frequently mentions, especially in his workDe Finibus. I know that it is one of the liberal studies, a ladder for those who are striving upwards, and by no means a useless protection to those who are forcing their way through the thorny thickets of philosophy. It stimulates the intellect, points out the way of truth, shows us how to avoid fallacies, and finally, if it accomplishes nothing else, makes us ready and quick-witted.

All this I readily admit, but because a road is proper for us to traverse, it does not immediately follow that we should linger on it forever. No traveller, unless he be mad, will forget his destination on account of the pleasures of the way; his characteristic virtue lies, on the contrary, in reaching his goal as soon as possible, never halting on the road. And who of us is not a traveller? We all have our long and arduous journey to accomplish in a brief and untoward time,—on a short, tempestuous, wintry day as it were. Dialectics may form aportion of our road, but certainly not its end: it belongs to the morning of life, not to its evening. We may have done once with perfect propriety what it would be shameful to continue. If as mature men we cannot leave the schools of logic because we have found pleasure in them as boys, why should we blush to play odd and even, or prance upon a shaky reed, or be rocked again in the cradle of our childhood? Nature, with cunning artifice, escapes from dull monotony by her wondrous change of seasons, with their varying aspects. Shall we look for these alternations in the circuit of the year, and not in the course of a long life? The spring brings flowers and the new leaves of the trees, the summer is rich in its harvest, autumn in fruit, and then comes winter with its snows. In this order the changes are not only tolerable but agreeable; but if the order were to be altered, against the laws of nature, they would become distasteful. No one would suffer with equanimity the cold of winter in summer time, or a raging sun during the months where it does not belong.

Who would not scorn and deride an old man who sported with children, or marvel at a grizzled and gouty stripling? What is more necessary to our training than our first acquaintance with the alphabet itself, which serves as the foundation of all later studies; but, on the other hand, what could be more absurd than a grandfather still busy over his letters?

Use my arguments with the disciples of your ancient logician. Do not deter them from the studyof logic; urge them rather to hasten through it to better things. Tell the old fellow himself that it is not the liberal arts which I condemn, but only hoary-headed children. Even as nothing is more disgraceful, as Seneca says, than an old man just beginning his alphabet, so there is no spectacle more unseemly than a person of mature years devoting himself to dialectics. But if your friend begins to vomit forth syllogisms, I advise you to take flight, bidding him argue with Enceladus.[4]Farewell.

AVIGNON, March 11.

[1]Fam., i., 6.

[2]His friend's home.

[3]Homines litterati, probably simply those versed in the Latin tongue.

[4]It is interesting to compare these views with those of John of Salisbury who, writing almost two centuries before the time of Petrarch's letter says: "It seemed to me pleasant to revisit my old companions on the Mount [of St. Geneviève at Paris], whom I had left and whom dialectic still detained, and to confer with them touching the old subjects of debate, that we might by mutual comparison measure our respective progress. I found them as before, and where they were before; they did not appear to have advanced an inch in settling the old questions, nor had they added a single proposition. The aims that once inspired them inspired them still; they had progressed in one point only, they had unlearned moderation, they knew not modesty; and that to such an extent that one might despair of their recovery. So experience taught me a manifest conclusion, that, while logic furthers other studies, it is by itself lifeless and barren, nor can it cause the mind to yield the fruit of philosophy except the same conceive from some other source." Migne,Pat. Lat., vol. cxcix., p. 869.

Quæ cum scholar atque ævi comitibus quædam quasi somnia viderentur, mihi jam tunc, omnia videntem testor Deum, et vera et pæne præsentia videbantur.Fam., xxiv., 1.

Quæ cum scholar atque ævi comitibus quædam quasi somnia viderentur, mihi jam tunc, omnia videntem testor Deum, et vera et pæne præsentia videbantur.

Fam., xxiv., 1.

Every age has a philosophy of life, which reaches and affects, in greater or less degree, the thought and action of all of its members. To the centuries before Petrarch the world was a place in which to prepare for a life beyond; the noblest subject of thought was theology; the saving of the soul was the one important task. The centuries since have realised in some measure that the present life is precious in itself and is not to be thus subordinated. This shifting of the view is of immense significance; and it is owing to Petrarch, more than to any other one man.

The process was, after all, not so much a shifting as a blending, a powerful modification of the mediæval notions by those of the ancient world. The ancients frankly delighted in sensuous beauty, and felt an unrestrained joy in mere living, and trusted nature and the natural impulses. They were thoroughly human, and the return to them humanisedthe narrow conceptions of the Middle Ages. And this return was largely Petrarch's work.

Men had conversed with the classics before his day. They were by no means unstudied in mediæval times. John of Salisbury, for example, in the twelfth century, had known almost as many of the Roman poets and moralists and historians as Petrarch himself. He had known them, however, and used them, in a very different fashion. He had read them with no surrender to their charm, and no response to their views concerning life and its uses. We wonder at his knowledge of the text of his classical authors, and at the aptness with which he cites them in illustration of his thought; but we wonder still more at his utter inability to understand their attitude, to find their point of view. Lifelong intercourse with them failed to widen his range of vision. Despite their influence he remained mediæval in all his thought.

But with Petrarch it was otherwise. He first, among the men of the Middle Ages, was endowed with a passionate love for the beauty of ancient literature, and an entire sympathy with its ruling ideas, and at the same time, it must be observed, with a saving incapacity to foresee the disintegration of thought andfaith that in the long run would inevitably result from such sympathy. Both in his strength and in his weakness he was eminently fitted to be the founder, or furtherer, of Humanism.

Petrarch's love of the classics began in admiration of their more superficial charm, which is just what would be expected of the youth who wrote the graceful lyrics of theCanzoniere. But this feeling developed soon into a perception of their deeper beauty and significance. At the time when he first becomes thoroughly known to us as a student of antiquity we are amazed at the justness of his appreciation. Only occasionally does he betray the fact that he is a man of the Middle Ages, hampered by a narrow intellectual inheritance; and that his work is that of a pioneer, in a country which is absolutely unexplored.

Of these rare limitations we detect the fewest traces in his criticism of Cicero. This may be accounted for largely on the ground that Cicero and Petrarch were men of the same temperament and cast of mind. They were both typical men of letters. The man of letters is intellectually alert; sensitive to impressions and able to report them; hospitable to all the ideas of his time; sometimes inconsistent,because of this very catholicity; and often despised in consequence by practical men, although in reality more practical than they, inasmuch as he has the art of communicating his flashes of insight and his generous enthusiasm to others, who in the end reconcile his inconsistencies and make his dreams come true. This is an exceptional character, but Cicero sustained it fully, and so did Petrarch too. They were thus of the same stamp. Moreover, their circumstances were similar in many respects. Cicero's task as an interpreter of Greek thought was not unlike Petrarch's life-work. It was impossible, with all these likenesses, that the one, however defective his knowledge, should fail to comprehend the other.

Petrarch's letters afford countless illustrations of the truth of these statements. In outward form, to be sure, and once in a while in their material and the treatment of it, they suggest rather Seneca than Cicero. That, however, is easily explained. Petrarch's epistolary ways had been fully determined before ever he saw Cicero's correspondence, or any portion of it.[1]So it was quite impossible that he should follow him in matters of fashion and form. But in spirit and intention, in all their deeper affinities, the letters are distinctly Ciceronian, akin to Cicero's essays and treatises. Cicero's style is plainly Petrarch's ideal, although he is too wise to imitate it slavishly. And he falls, at his best, not very far short of Cicero's clearness and animation, his variety, his aptness of quotation and illustration. A clearer case of sympathetic comprehension of another, and of reproduction without imitation, it would be hard to find.

Next to Cicero, Petrarch cared most among Roman writers for Virgil. One would have expected to find this order reversed,—to find the poet of theAfricafar more devoted to his great forerunner than to one who was essentially unpoetical, a rhetorician and prosaist. The explanation of the seeming anomaly is twofold. In the first place, it was in temperament only that Petrarch was a poet, and not, after the splendid lyrical outburst of theCanzoniere, in the whole compass of his thought and feeling. He could not have done the work which he did if it had been otherwise. It was necessary that the first Humanist should combine with the poet'sopenness of mind, and love of whatever is beautiful, scholarly patience and a willingness to lead a scholar's life. And then, in the second place, Petrarch was debarred from full appreciation of Virgil by an inability to escape from the dominion of certain mediæval conceptions of poetry.

For one thing, he valued poetry largely in proportion as it is made the vehicle of criticism of life, of the more obvious sort. One is surprised, in examining the numerous quotations from Virgil that are scattered throughout the letters, to find how invariably they are chosen either because they are strikingly rhetorical in form or in consequence of their didactic quality. Poetry seems to have become to Petrarch, as his life and his studies advanced and he drew farther away in time and temper from his early creative period, little more than a somewhat finer form of prose. Virgil, with all his reverence for him, was not unlike another Cicero. He says in one of his letters: "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 am placing them, I had better say that Tullius and Maro are the two parents of Roman literature." Such remarks,which are not infrequent, are indicative of an incapacity to feel keenly and enjoy deeply what is finest in Virgil. Petrarch seems to us to-day like a child, who values the beautiful commonplaces of the poet more highly than his occasional soundings of the depths and mysteries of life. He had no adequate appreciation of Virgil's 'majestic sadness,' his 'pathetic half lines,' his 'tears for the things that are.'

To this same insensitiveness on the æsthetic side we must ascribe Petrarch's inability to free himself from the mediæval delusion as to the profound allegorical significance of theÆneid,and of all other noble poetry as well. A true poet may entertain very strange theories concerning the nature of his art, but in his better moments he will rise above them and unconsciously belie them, both in his practice and in his criticism of others. This Petrarch, after his early youth, never did. His highest aim in his own poetical compositions was to set forth moral truths under an obscure veil of allegory, and his greatest delight in studying the poets of antiquity was to penetrate the veil under, which he believed they had hidden their wisdom. Dante's chance lines in the ninth book of theInfernogive exact expressionto this ruling thought of his:

O voi che avete gl' intelletti sani,Mirate la dottrina che s'ascondeSotto il velame degli versi strani!

Dante's application of this idea, however, was one thing and Petrarch's another. Petrarch aimed at nothing worthier than a multitude of minute and trivial correspondences. The effect upon his verse is indicated by the letter to his brother Gherardo which is given toward the close of this chapter. The effect upon his criticism may be learned by examining certain other letters, in theSeniles. In one of these he says:[2]

"Virgil's subject, as I understand the matter, is The Perfect Man.... In the passage that you ask me to explain I look upon the winds as nothing more nor less than blasts of anger and mad desire, which disturb with their wild storms the quiet of our life, as tempests do some tranquil sea. Æolus is our reason, which curbs and controls these headstrong passions. If it did not do so they would sweep away sea and land and the overarching sky, that is, our blood and flesh and bones and our very souls, and plunge them down to deathand destruction:

... maria ac terras cœlumque profundum quippe ferant rapidi secum.

The dark caverns where Virgil represents them as being hidden away, what are they but the hollow and hidden parts of our bodies, where, according to Plato's determination, the passions dwell in abodes of their own, in the breast and entrails? The mountain mass which is placed above them is the head, where Plato thinks the reason has its home.... Venus, who meets them in the middle of the wood, is pleasure, whose pursuit by us becomes hotter and keener toward the middle of our life. Her assumption of a maidenly look and air is for the purpose of deceiving the unwary. If we saw her as she is we should flee from her in fear and trembling; for, as there is nothing more tempting than pleasure, so there is nothing more foul. Her garments are girded up because her flight is swift. For this same reason she is compared to the swiftest of creatures and things.[3]It cannot be denied that nothing swifter exists, whether you consider her comprehensively or part by part; for pleasure as a whole passes from us very soon, and evenwhile it still abides with us each taste of it lasts but a moment. And then, finally, she appears in the garb of a huntress, because she hunts for the souls of miserable mortals. And she has a bow, and has flowing hair, in order that she may smite us and charm us."[4]

Petrarch's love for Cicero and Virgil sprang from what one may call the fundamental humanistic impulse, delight in the free play of the mind among ideas that are stimulating and beautiful. His devotion to Livy came, in part, from a different source, from a singular sort of patriotism. He felt that he, and every other Italian of his day, was descended in a certain sense from the Romans of old; that their glory was his rightful heritage; that Rome, the ancient Rome, which he found still in existence beneath the wretched mediæval stronghold, was the city of his love and allegiance. Livy's pages accordingly were to him the record of the great deeds of his forefathers. He studied them with the utmost eagerness.

Under the influence of one or the other of these two passions, the thirst for new truth and beauty and the love of the past, or of both of them in conjunction, Petrarch laboured strenuously, until he had gathered together from ahundred obscure sources all the remains of Roman literature that were obtainable in his day, and had made himself familiar with them. Greek literature, unfortunately, it was impossible for him to know. In spite of a lifelong desire, and at least one determined effort, he was unable to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of the Greek language.[5]He read in barren Latin translations more or less of Plato and Aristotle and Homer, but this could afford him nothing like an adequate conception of the power and beauty of the literature as a whole. It is a sad pity that he was so handicapped, for if the first Humanist had known and appreciated Homer and Plato and Sophocles, as he did Cicero and Virgil and Seneca and Livy, all our modern culture would be something far finer. We should be simpler and clearer in our conceptions, and better developed æsthetically. If Hellenic influences have never played their due part in our education, if the proportion between the Greek and the Roman elements has been unnatural, this is owing mainly to the insufficient opportunities of Petrarch and his earliest disciples.

To the classical authors that he did possess he devoted a prolonged and intense study that has very rarely been equalled. He followed faithfully his own injunctions given in theDe Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ:"If you would win glory from your books you must know them, and not merely have them; must stow them away, not in your library, but in your memory, not in your bookcases, but in your brain." Annotations in his hand on the manuscripts that have been traced back to him[6]show that he weighed with care every word of his favourite writers. But external evidence like this is not necessary. Every page of his letters, and of all his other Latin writings too, is proof in itself that as far as his limitations permitted he had absorbed the very spirit of his beloved classics.

A PAGE OF PETRARCH'S COPY OF THE "ILIAD."

The letters show also how eager he was to hand on to others the light that he had gained from these studies. He had as wide and varied an acquaintance as any man of his time, thanks to the fame that he had won in his youth by his verses, and to the attraction that he exercised upon everyone in later life, through his personal charm and his remarkable intellectual powers; and one of the inevitable consequences of such a connection was a correspondence thatwas both active and large. He wrote to the emperor and the pope, to kings and their regents, to churchmen of every degree, to scholars in almost all parts of Europe, to men of every profession, every age, every taste; and he wrote always as a Humanist, a lover of the classics, who found in them the quintessence of human wisdom. Men everywhere were ready for broader views, deeper knowledge, keener life, and he, through these letters and through personal contact, stimulated their longing and showed them where they might find that which would satisfy it. The influence that he thus exerted is incalculable. This volume is but an effort to give some comprehension of it.

[1]He did not discover the groupAd Atticumuntil 1345, when he was more than forty years old. And Voigt and Viertel have shown that the very existence of theAd Familiareswas unknown to him.

[2]Sen., iv., 4

[3]......... qualis equos Threissa fatigat Harpalyce volucremque fuga prævertitur Hebrum.

[4]Petrarch sometimes applies this method of criticism more wisely and with better results.Cf. Fam., xiv., 1 (vol. ii., pp. 268, 269).

[5]There was no apparatus for the study of Greek at that time. Oral instruction from Greek or Byzantine scholars was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was difficult to secure, as Petrarch's efforts and failure prove.

[6]Through the patience and ingenuity of M. de Nolhac.

Of the letters that follow the first four are given for the sake of showing the range and quality of Petrarch's classical scholarship. They are taken, with one exception, from the letters to dead authors, which constitute a large part of the twenty-fourth book of theFamiliares. The first is addressed to Cicero.

Your letters I sought for long and diligently; and finally, where I least expected it, I found them. At once I read them, over and over, with the utmosteagerness. And as I read I seemed to hear your bodily voice, O Marcus Tullius, saying many things, uttering many lamentations, ranging through many phases of thought and feeling. I long had known how excellent a guide you have proved for others; at last I was to learn what sort of guidance you gave yourself.

Now it is your turn to be the listener. Hearken, wherever you are, to the words of advice, or rather of sorrow and regret, that fall, not unaccompanied by tears, from the lips of one of your successors, who loves you faithfully and cherishes your name. O spirit ever restless and perturbed! in old age—I am but using your own words—self-involved in calamities and ruin! what good could you think would come from your incessant wrangling, from all this wasteful strife and enmity? Where were the peace and quiet that befitted your years, your profession, your station in life? What Will-o'-the-wisp tempted you away, with a delusive hope of glory; involved you, in your declining years, in the wars of younger men; and, after exposing you to every form of misfortune, hurled you down to a death that it was unseemly for a philosopher to die? Alas! the wise counsel that you gave your brother, and the salutary advice of your great masters, youforgot. You were like a traveller in the night, whose torch lights up for others the path where he himself has miserably fallen.

Of Dionysius I forbear to speak; of your brother and nephew, too; of Dolabella even, if you like. At one moment you praise them all to the skies; at the next fall upon them with sudden maledictions. This, however, could perhaps be pardoned. I will pass by Julius Cæsar, too, whose well-approved clemency was a harbour of refuge for the very men who were warring against him. Great Pompey, likewise, I refrain from mentioning. His affection for you was such that you could do with him what you would. But what insanity led you to hurl yourself upon Antony? Love of the republic, you would probably say. But the republic had fallen before this into irretrievable ruin, as you had yourself admitted. Still, it is possible that a lofty sense of duty, and love of liberty, constrained you to do as you did, hopeless though the effort was. That we can easily believe of so great a man. But why, then, were you so friendly with Augustus? What answer can you give to Brutus? If you accept Octavius, said he, we must conclude that you are not so anxious to be rid of all tyrants as to find a tyrant who will be well-disposed toward yourself. Now, unhappy man, you were to take the last false step, the last and most deplorable. You began to speak ill of the very friend whom you had so lauded, although he was not doing any ill to you, but merely refusing to prevent others who were. I grieve, dear friend, at such fickleness. These shortcomings fillme with pity and shame. Like Brutus, I feel no confidence in the arts in which you are so proficient. What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions? Ah! how much better it would have been, how much more fitting for a philosopher, to have grown old peacefully in the country, meditating, as you yourself have somewhere said, upon the life that endures for ever, and not upon this poor fragment of life; to have known no fasces, yearned for no triumphs, found no Catilines to fill the soul with ambitious longings!—All this, however, is vain. Farewell, forever, my Cicero.

Written in the land of the living; on the right bank of the Adige, in Verona, a city of Transpadane Italy; on the 16th of June, and in the year of that God whom you never knew the 1345th.

[1]Fam., xxiv., 3. This epistle was written very soon after Petrarch's discovery, at Verona, of theLetters to Atticus and Quintusand theCorrespondence with Brutus, known collectively as theLetters addressed to Atticus. It undoubtedly gives us the impressions derived from the first eager perusal of these.It will be observed that Petrarch is less at his ease here than in his ordinary correspondence. One feels in all his letters to the great men of the past a certain constraint. He was awe-struck, and his style consequently is a little self-conscious and laboured.

It will be observed that Petrarch is less at his ease here than in his ordinary correspondence. One feels in all his letters to the great men of the past a certain constraint. He was awe-struck, and his style consequently is a little self-conscious and laboured.

With that should go the following interesting little account of a controversy between Petrarch and a certain aged scholar whom he met in the course of one of his journeys. Nothing could afford a clearer insight into either the nature of Petrarch's own feeling for the classics or the general humanistic conditions of the time. This is one of the letters, as the opening sentences show, that were carefully revised for the public.

To Pulice di Vicenza[1]

On my way I stopped overnight in one of Vicenza's suburbs, and there I found something new to write about. It happened that I had left Padua not much before noon, and so did not reach the outskirts of your city until the sun was getting low. I tried to make up my mind whether I had better put up there or push on a little farther; for I was in a hurry, and the days are long now, and it would be light for a good while yet. I was still hesitating, when lo!—for who can remain hidden from the friends who love him?—all my doubts were happily resolved by your arrival, in company with several other men of mark, such as that little city has always produced in great abundance. My mind was tossing this way and that, but you and your companions, with your pleasant varied talk, furnished the cable that bound it fast. I planned to go, but still stayed on; and did not realise that the daylight was slipping away from me until night was actually at hand. So I discovered once again what I had observed often before, that there is nothing that filches time away from us, without our perceiving it, like converse with our friends. They are the greatest of all thieves of time. And yet we ought to deem no time less truly stolen from us, less truly lost out of our lives, than such as is expended (next to God) upon them.

Well, not to review the story at too great length, you remember that some one made mention of Cicero, as will very often happen among men of literary tastes. This name at once brought our desultory conversation to an end. We all turned our thoughts toward him. Nothing but Cicero was discussed after that. As we sat and feasted together we vied with one another in singing his praises. Still, there is nothing in this world that is absolutely perfect; never has the man existed in whom the critic, were he ever so lenient, would see nothing at all to reprehend. So it chanced that while I expressed admiration for Cicero, almost without reservation, as a man whom I loved and honoured above all others, and amazement too at his golden eloquence and his heavenly genius, I found at the same time a little fault with his fickleness and inconsistency, traits that are revealed everywhere in his life and works. At once I saw that all who were present were astonished at so unusual an opinion, and one among them especially so. I refer to the old man, your fellow-citizen, whose name has gone from me, although his image is fresh in my memory, and I revere him, both for his years and for his scholarship.

Well, the circumstances seemed to demand that I fetch the manuscript of my correspondence with my friends, which I had with me in my chest. It was brought in, and added fuel to the flame. For among the letters that were written to my contemporaries there are a few, inserted with an eye to variety and for the sake of a little diversionin the midst of my more serious labours, that are addressed to some of the more illustrious men of ancient times. A reader who was not forewarned would be amazed at these, finding names so old and of such renown mingled with those of our own day. Two of them are to Cicero himself; one criticising his character, the other praising his genius. These two you read, while the others listened; and then the strife of words grew warmer. Some approved of what I had written, admitting that Cicero deserved my censure. But the old man stood his ground, more stubbornly even than before. He was so blinded by love of his hero and by the brightness of his name that he preferred to praise him even when he was in the wrong; to embrace faults and virtues together, rather than make any exceptions. He would not be thought to condemn anything at all in so great a man. So instead of answering our arguments he rang the changes again and again upon the splendour of Cicero's fame, letting authority usurp the place of reason. He would stretch out his hand and say imploringly, "Gently, I beg of you, gently with my Cicero." And when we asked him if he found it impossible to believe that Cicero had made mistakes, he would close his eyes and turn his face away and exclaim with a groan, as if he had been smitten, "Alas! alas! Is my beloved Cicero accused of doing wrong?" just as if we were speaking not of a man but of some god. I asked him, accordingly, whether in his opinion Tullius was a god, or a man like others. "A god," he replied; and then, realising what he had said, he added, "a god of eloquence.""Oh, very well!" I answered; "if he is a god, he certainly could not have erred. However, I never heard him styled so before. And yet, if Cicero calls Plato his god, why should not you in turn speak of Cicero as yours?—except that it is not in harmony with our religious beliefs for men to fashion gods for themselves as they may fancy." "I am only jesting," said he; "I know that Tullius was a man, but he was a man of godlike genius." "That is better," I responded; "for when Quintilian called him heavenly he spoke no more than the truth. But then, if you admit that he was a man, it follows necessarily that he could make mistakes, and did so." As I spoke these words he shuddered and turned away, as if they were aimed not at another man's reputation but at his own life. What could I say, I who am myself so great an admirer of Cicero's genius? I felt that the old scholar was to be envied for his ardour and devotion, which had something of the Pythagorean savour. I was rejoiced at finding such reverence for even one great man; such almost religious regard, so fervent that to suspect any touch of human weakness in its object seemed like sacrilege. I was amazed, too, at having discovered a person who cherished a love greater than mine for the man whom I always had loved beyond all others; a person who in old age still held, deeply rooted in his heart, the opinions concerning him which I remember to have entertained in my boyhood; and who, notwithstanding his advanced years, was incapable of arguing that if Cicero was a man it followed that in some cases, inmany indeed, he must have erred, a conclusion that I have been forced, by common sense and by knowledge of his life, to accept at this earlier stage of my development,—although this conviction does not alter the fact that the beauty of his work delights me still, beyond that of any other writer. Why, Tullius himself, the very man of whom we are speaking, took this view, for he often bewailed his errors, bitterly. If, in our eagerness to praise him, we deny that he thus understood himself, we deprive him of a large part of his renown as a philosopher, the praise, namely, that is due to self-knowledge and modesty.

To return, however, to that day; after a long discussion we were compelled by the lateness of the hour to desist, and separated with the question still unsettled. But as we parted you asked me to send you from my first resting-place, inasmuch as the shortness of the time would not let me attend to it just then, a copy of each of these letters of mine, in order that you might look into the matter a little more carefully, and be in a position to act as a mediator between the parties, or, possibly, as a champion of Cicero's steadfastness and consistency. I approve of your intention, and send the copies herewith. I do so, strange to say, with a fear that I may be victorious, and a hope that I may be vanquished. And one thing more: I must tell you that if you do prove the victor you have a larger task on your hands than you now imagine. For Annæus Seneca, whom I criticise in my very next letter in a similar way, insists that you act as his champion too.

I have dealt familiarly with these great geniuses, and perhaps boldly, but lovingly, but sorrowfully, but truthfully, I think[2]; with somewhat more of truthfulness, in fact, than I myself relish. There are many things in both of them that delight me, only a few that trouble me. Of these few I felt constrained to write; perhaps to-day I should feel otherwise. For, although I have grouped these letters together at the end, it is only because their subject-matter is so unlike the others; they came from the anvil long ago.

The fact is, I still grieve over the fate of these great men; but I do not lament their faults any the less because of that. Furthermore, I beg you to note that I say nothing against Seneca's private life, nor against Cicero's attitude toward the state. Do not confuse the two cases. It is Cicero alone whom we are discussing now; and I am not forgetting that he as consul was vigilant and patriotic, and cured the disease from which the republic was suffering; nor that as a private citizen he always loved his country faithfully. But what of his fickleness in friendship; and his bitter quarrels upon slight provocation,—quarrels that brought ruin upon himself and good to no one; and his inability to understand his own position and the condition of the republic, so unlike his usual acumen; and, finally, the spectacle of a philosopher, in his old age, childishly fond of useless wrangling? These things I cannot praise. And remember that they are things concerningwhich no unbiassed judgment can be formed, by you or anyone else, without a careful reading of the entire correspondence of Cicero, which suggested this controversy.[3]

May 13th,en route.

Back to Index Next