No More Learning

Nor was his
energy merely physical; he read much, and forgot nothing--his memory was
a library. Azzo's character, to be sure, even with allowance for
turbulent times, is not invulnerable at all points to a rigid scrutiny;
and, notwithstanding all the praises of Petrarch, who dedicated to him
his Treatise on a Solitary Life in 1366, his political career contained
some acts of perfidy. But we must inure ourselves, in the biography of
Petrarch, to his over-estimation of favourites in the article of morals.

It was not long ere Petrarch was called upon to give a substantial proof
of his regard for Azzo. After the seizure of Parma by the confederate
princes, Marsilio di Rossi, brother of Rolando, went to Paris to demand
assistance from the French king. The King of Bohemia had given over the
government of Parma to him and his brothers, and the Rossi now saw it
with grief assigned to his enemies, the Correggios. Marsilio could
obtain no succour from the French, who were now busy in preparing for
war with the English; so he carried to the Pope at Avignon his
complaints against the alleged injustice of the lords of Verona and the
Correggios in breaking an express treaty which they had made with the
house of Rossi.

Azzo had the threefold task of defending, before the Pope's tribunal,
the lords of Verona, whose envoy he was; the rights of his family, which
were attacked; and his own personal character, which was charged with
some grave objections. Revering the eloquence and influence of Petrarch,
he importuned him to be his public defender. Our poet, as we have seen,
had studied the law, but had never followed the profession. "It is not
my vocation," he says, in his preface to his Familiar Epistles, "to
undertake the defence of others. I detest the bar; I love retirement; I
despise money; and, if I tried to let out my tongue for hire, my nature
would revolt at the attempt. "

But what Petrarch would not undertake either from taste or motives of
interest, he undertook at the call of friendship. He pleaded the cause
of Azzo before the Pope and Cardinals; it was a finely-interesting
cause, that afforded a vast field for his eloquence. He brought off his
client triumphantly; and the Rossis were defeated in their demand.
At the same time, it is a proud trait in Petrarch's character that he
showed himself on this occasion not only an orator and a lawyer, but a
perfect gentleman. In the midst of all his zealous pleading, he stooped
neither to satire nor personality against the opposing party. He could
say, with all the boldness of truth, in a letter to Ugolino di Rossi,
the Bishop of Parma, "I pleaded against your house for Azzo Correggio,
but you were present at the pleading; do me justice, and confess that I
carefully avoided not only attacks on your family and reputation, but
even those railleries in which advocates so much delight. "

On this occasion, Azzo had brought to Avignon, as his colleague in the
lawsuit, Guglielmo da Pastrengo, who exercised the office of judge and
notary at Verona. He was a man of deep knowledge in the law; versed,
besides, in every branch of elegant learning, he was a poet into the
bargain. In Petrarch's many books of epistles, there are few letters
addressed by him to this personage; but it is certain that they
contracted a friendship at this period which endured for life.

All this time the Bishop of Lombes still continued at Rome; and, from
time to time, solicited his friend Petrarch to join him. "Petrarch would
have gladly joined him," says De Sade; "but he was detained at Avignon
by his attachment to John Colonna and his love of Laura:" a whimsical
junction of detaining causes, in which the fascination of the Cardinal
may easily be supposed to have been weaker than that of Laura. In
writing to our poet, at Avignon, the Bishop rallied Petrarch on the
imaginary existence of the object of his passion. Some stupid readers of
the Bishop's letter, in subsequent times, took it into their heads that
there was a literal proof in the prelate's jesting epistle of our poet's
passion for Laura being a phantom and a fiction. But, possible as it may
be, that the Bishop in reality suspected him to exaggerate the flame of
his devotion for the two great objects of his idolatry, Laura and St.
Augustine, he writes in a vein of pleasantry that need not be taken for
grave accusation. "You are befooling us all, my dear Petrarch," says the
prelate; "and it is wonderful that at so tender an age (Petrarch's
tender age was at this time thirty-one) you can deceive the world with
so much art and success. And, not content with deceiving the world, you
would fain deceive Heaven itself. You make a semblance of loving St.
Augustine and his works; but, in your heart, you love the poets and the
philosophers.