ignorance nothing can suppress; neither the respect due to Jesus Christ, nor the fear of inquisitors, prisons, or faggots, nothing can make any impression upon them. These are the people, my dear friend, with whom we live, and who take upon them the office of our judges. Not content with having lost the works of the ancients, they insult their manes: eager after novelties, they attach themselves to new guides, spread abroad new doctrines, and despise all that are ancient. We cannot hope for better judges in posterity; licentiousness increases every day, and the number of its philosophers; the schools, marketplaces, and streets, are full of them.'

Soon after writing this letter, Petrarch went and passed the autumn at Pavia: Galeas Viscomti had built there the finest palace in the world. At Easter he went always to Padua, to discharge, at that holy time, the office of his canonry. The Florentines, who asked him to reside in his own city, applied to the pope to grant him a canonry there. The pope had something better in view for him; but the rumor of his death being spread over France, the pope disposed of that, and the benefices of Petrarch; many of which the latter, unknown to him, had given away to his friends: this caused a great disturbance in the Roman court. This false report had spread to Italy, and they wept for him

at Milan, and even at Padua, which is so near Venice, that had I been dead,' says he, they might have heard my last sigh there.' He had a sort of complaint, which was very troublesome, and occasioned so great an itching, that he was unable to write, or employ himself in his usual affairs: this was the only ground of the report.

In 1365, Boccace went to Avignon on some public affair. He wrote to Petrarch, giving an account of his friends whom he saw at Avignon, and particularly Philip de Cabassole, now made patriarch of Jerusalem. As soon as he saw Boccace, though he knew him not, he ran to embrace him in the presence of the pope and the cardinals, asking with impatience for news of his dear Petrarch.

Petrarch, some months after this, sent his treatise on solitude to Philip de Cabassole, which he had long promised, but could not before get copied. This prelate wrote to Petrarch to thank him for his book: he assured him, the pope and the cardinal Gui of Bologna were desirous of it; that the archbishop of Embrun, and the bishop of Lisbon, had read it with great pleasure. 'As to myself,' adds he, 'I delight in it so much, that I make them read it to me at my repasts.'

'You have the eyes of a lynx,' replies Petrarch, but your friendship for me has blinded you; it is always equally ardent. You will cause

me at length to esteem my own works; for why should I suppose that so many great men are deceived in their judgments? Truly you will inspire me with confidence and emulation!'

Donat, the friend of Petrarch at Venice, came one morning to inform him of the tragical death of Leonce Pilate. When he was got to Greece, he wrote Petrarch a letter, as long and as dirty as his hair and his beard, in which he praised Italy to the skies, said every ill thing he could devise of Greece, and cursed Byzantium. He concluded, by desiring from Petrarch, a letter of recommendation to the emperor of Constantinople, by whom, he assured him, he was as well thought of as by the emperor of Rome. Petrarch made no answer to this letter. The Greek, who sighed after Italy, and wanted to be recalled there by Petrarch, wrote several times to acknowledge his error in returning to Greece, and to desire him to pardon it; but Petrarch, who knew his natural inconstancy of humor, and believed him too old to alter, agreed with Boccace to give him no answer. This Greek,'

said he, who would have been useful to our studies, if he were not a savage beast, shall never be recalled by me. It is but just that a man who, though in misery, trampled under foot the delights of Italy, should drag out a miserable life at Byzantium. Let him go, if he will, with

his filthy beard, his ragged cloke, and his brutish manners, and keep the labyrinth of Crete, where I know he passed several years.'

Notwithstanding Petrarch's continued silence, Leonce embarked for Venice in the first ship he could meet with, persuaded that Petrarch and Boccace would behold him again with pleasure, or at least that they would not shut their doors against him. Having safely passed the Bosphorus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, the Egean and Ionic seas, he was entered happily into the Adriatic, when there arose on a sudden a dreadful storm. While every one was employed in the necessary business of the ship, the terrified Greek had bound himself to a mast, when a flash of lightning setting fire to the cords of the sails, he was consumed in a moment. The people in the ship were seized with terror, but no one perished except Leonce. The shapeless and half roasted body of this miserable Greek, was thrown into the sea, and devoured by the fish of Italy instead of the worms of Greece, to whom Petrarch had destined it. He was touched, however, with this event, and wrote to Boccace to impart it to him. This unfortunate man,' said he, 'is gone out of this world as mournfully as he came into it. I believe he neverexperienced one serene day. His physiognomy seemed to announce his catastrophe. I cannot divine how any sparks of

poetic fire could ever penetrate into a soul enveloped with such thick darkness. His clothes and his books are not lost; I will have them sought; for, perhaps, there may be an Euripides, and a Sophocles, and some other books he promised me.' Petrarch was ever assiduous in his search after the best Greek authors. He begged Boccace to send him the translation of Homer made by Leonce. It was written out fair by the hand of Boccace, who had worked at it with the Greek. The manuscript comprehended the whole Iliad, and a part of the Odyssey. Leonce had not finished the last. Petrarch had sighed for this Latin Homer many years. The Greek and

Latin authors,' says he, which were in my library, received him with transports of joy.'

In February, 1366, there was great rejoicing in the house of Petrarch at Venice; Frances, his daughter, was brought to bed of a son, to whom Donat stood godfather, and to whom they gave the name of Francis. She had a daughter before this, born in 1363.

Every letter Petrarch received from Avignon, above all, from Philip de Cabassole, whose opinion weighed with him more than all the rest, was filled with the praises of Urban. The church resounded with his fame; nothing was talked of but his wit, his eloquence, his piety, his love of justice, his zeal for order, his bounty to the