No More Learning

A
message from the Pope produced an imprudent letter from the poet, in
which he says, "Holy father! I shudder at the account of your fever;
but, believe me, I am not a flatterer. I tremble to see your bed always
surrounded with physicians, who are never agreed, because it would be a
reproach to the second to think like the first. 'It is not to be
doubted,' as Pliny says, 'that physicians, desiring to raise a name by
their discoveries, make experiments upon us, and thus barter away our
lives. There is no law for punishing their extreme ignorance. They learn
their trade at our expense, they make some progress in the art of
curing; and they alone are permitted to murder with impunity. ' Holy
father! consider as your enemies the crowd of physicians who beset you.
It is in our age that we behold verified the prediction of the elder
Cato, who declared that corruption would be general when the Greeks
should have transmitted the sciences to Rome, and, above all, the
science of healing. Whole nations have done without this art. The Roman
republic, according to Pliny, was without physicians for six hundred
years, and was never in a more flourishing condition. "

The Pope, a poor dying old man, communicated Petrarch's letter
immediately to his physicians, and it kindled in the whole faculty a
flame of indignation, worthy of being described by Moliere. Petrarch
made a general enemy of the physicians, though, of course, the weakest
and the worst of them were the first to attack him. One of them told
him, "You are a foolhardy man, who, contemning the physicians, have no
fear either of the fever or of the malaria. " Petrarch replied, "I
certainly have no assurance of being free from the attacks of either;
but, if I were attacked by either, I should not think of calling in
physicians.
"

His first assailant was one of Clement's own physicians, who loaded him
with scurrility in a formal letter. These circumstances brought forth
our poet's "Four Books of Invectives against Physicians," a work in
which he undoubtedly exposes a great deal of contemporary quackery, but
which, at the same time, scarcely leaves the physician-hunter on higher
ground than his antagonists.

In the last year of his life, Clement VI. wished to attach our poet
permanently to his court by making him his secretary, and Petrarch,
after much coy refusal, was at last induced, by the solicitations of
his friends, to accept the office. But before he could enter upon it, an
objection to his filling it was unexpectedly started. It was discovered
that his style was too lofty to suit the humility of the Roman Church.
The elevation of Petrarch's style might be obvious, but certainly the
humility of the Church was a bright discovery. Petrarch, according to
his own account, so far from promising to bring down his magniloquence
to a level with church humility, seized the objection as an excuse for
declining the secretaryship. He compares his joy on this occasion to
that of a prisoner finding the gates of his prison thrown open. He
returned to Vaucluse, where he waited impatiently for the autumn, when
he meant to return to Italy. He thus describes, in a letter to his dear
Simonides, the manner of life which he there led:--

"I make war upon my body, which I regard as my enemy. My eyes, that have
made me commit so many follies, are well fixed on a safe object. They
look only on a woman who is withered, dark, and sunburnt. Her soul,
however, is as white as her complexion is black, and she has the air of
being so little conscious of her own appearance, that her homeliness may
be said to become her. She passes whole days in the open fields, when
the grasshoppers can scarcely endure the sun. Her tanned hide braves the
heats of the dog-star, and, in the evening, she arrives as fresh as if
she had just risen from bed.