No More Learning

The Senate of Venice severely punished the delinquents, and by their
decree upon the subject testified their deep respect for the remains of
this great man.

The moment the poet's will was opened, Brossano, his heir, hastened to
forward to his friends the little legacies which had been left them;
among the rest his fifty florins to Boccaccio. The answer of that most
interesting man is characteristic of his sensibility, whilst it
unhappily shows him to be approaching the close of his life (for he
survived Petrarch but a year), in pain and extreme debility. "My first
impulse," he says to Brossano, "on hearing of the decease of my master,"
so he always denominated our poet, "was to have hastened to his tomb to
bid him my last adieu, and to mix my tears with yours. But ever since I
lectured in public on the Divina Commedia of Dante, which is now ten
months, I have suffered under a malady which has so weakened and changed
me, that you would not recognise me. I have totally lost the stoutness
and complexion which I had when you saw me at Venice. My leanness is
extreme, my sight is dim, my hands shake, and my knees totter, so that I
can hardly drag myself to my country-house at Certaldo, where I only
languish. After reading your letter, I wept a whole night for my dear
master, not on his own account, for his piety permits us not to doubt
that he is now happy, but for myself and for his friends whom he has
left in this world, like a vessel in a stormy sea without a pilot. By my
own grief I judge of yours, and of that of Tullia, my beloved sister,
your worthy spouse. I envy Arqua the happiness of holding deposited in
her soil him whose heart was the abode of the Muses, and the sanctuary
of philosophy and eloquence. That village, scarcely known to Padua, will
henceforth be famed throughout the world. Men will respect it like Mount
Pausilippo for containing the ashes of Virgil, the shore of the Euxine
for possessing the tomb of Ovid, and Smyrna for its being believed to be
the burial-place of Homer. " Among other things, Boccaccio inquires what
has become of his divine poem entitled Africa, and whether it had been
committed to the flames, a fate with which Petrarch, from excess of
delicacy, often threatened his compositions.

From this letter it appears that this epic, to which he owed the laurel
and no small part of his living reputation, had not yet been published,
with the exception of thirty-four verses, which had appeared at Naples
through the indiscretion of Barbatus. Boccaccio said that Petrarch kept
it continually locked up, and had been several times inclined to burn
it.
The author of the Decameron himself did not long survive his master:
he died the 21st of December, 1375.

Petrarch so far succeeded in clearing the road to the study of
antiquities, as to deserve the title which he justly retains of the
restorer of classical learning; nor did his enthusiasm for ancient
monuments prevent him from describing them with critical taste. He gave
an impulse to the study of geography by his Itinerarium Syriacum. That
science had been partially revived in the preceding century, by the
publication of Marco Polo's travels, and journeys to distant countries
had been accomplished more frequently than before, not only by religious
missionaries, but by pilgrims who travelled from purely rational
curiosity: but both of these classes of travellers, especially the
religionists, dealt profusely in the marvellous; and their falsehoods
were further exaggerated by copyists, who wished to profit by the sale
of MSS. describing their adventures. As an instance of the doubtful
wonders related by wayfaring men, may be noticed what is told of
Octorico da Pordenone, who met, at Trebizond, with a man who had trained
four thousand partridges to follow him on journeys for three days
together, who gathered around like chickens when he slept, and who
returned home after he had sold to the Emperor as many of them as his
imperial majesty chose to select.

His treatise, "De Remediis utriusque Fortunae" (On the Remedies for both
Extremes of Fortune) was one of his great undertakings in the solitude
of Vaucluse, though it was not finished till many years afterwards, when
it was dedicated to Azzo Correggio. Here he borrows, of course, largely
from the ancients; at the same time he treats us to some observations on
human nature sufficiently original to keep his work from the dryness of
plagiarism.

His treatise on "A Solitary Life" was written as an apology for his own
love of retirement--retirement, not solitude, for Petrarch had the
social feeling too strongly in his nature to desire a perfect hermitage.
He loved to have a friend now and then beside him, to whom he might say
how sweet is solitude. Even his deepest retirement in the "shut-up
valley" was occasionally visited by dear friends, with whom his
discourse was so interesting that they wandered in the woods so long and
so far, that the servant could not find them to announce that their
dinner was ready. In his rapturous praise of living alone, our poet,
therefore, says more than he sincerely meant; he liked retirement, to be
sure, but then it was with somebody within reach of him, like the young
lady in Miss Porter's novel, who was fond of solitude, and walked much
in Hyde Park by herself, with her footman behind her.

His treatise, "De Otio Religiosorum," was written in 1353, after an
agreeable visit to his brother, who was a monk. It is a commendation of
the monastic life. He may be found, I dare say, to exaggerate the
blessing of that mode of life which, in proportion to our increasing
activity and intelligence, has sunk in the estimation of Protestant
society, so that we compare the whole monkish fraternity with the drones
in a hive, an ignavum pecus, whom the other bees are right in expelling.

Though I shall never pretend to be the translator of Petrarch, I recoil
not, after writing his Life, from giving a sincere account of the
impression which his poetry produces on my mind.