No More Learning

Hither I retreat during the noontide hours; my mornings are engaged upon
the hills, or in the garden sacred to Apollo. Here I would most
willingly pass my days, were I not too near Avignon, and too far from
Italy. For why should I conceal this weakness of my soul? I love Italy,
and I hate Avignon. The pestilential influence of this horrid place
empoisons the pure air of Vaucluse, and will compel me to quit my
retirement. "

It is clear that he was not supremely contented in his solitude with his
self-drawn mental resources. His friends at Avignon came seldom to see
him. Travelling even short distances was difficult in those days. Even
we, in the present day, can remember when the distance of fourteen miles
presented a troublesome journey. The few guests who came, to him could
not expect very exquisite dinners, cooked by the brown old woman and her
husband the fisherman; and, though our poet had a garden consecrated to
Bacchus, he had no cellar devoted to the same deity. His few friends,
therefore, who visited him, thought their angel visits acts of charity.
If he saw his friends seldom, however, he had frequent visitants in
strangers who came to Vaucluse, as a place long celebrated for its
natural beauties, and now made illustrious by the character and
compositions of our poet. Among these there were persons distinguished
for their rank or learning, who came from the farthest parts of France
and from Italy, to see and converse with Petrarch. Some of them even
sent before them considerable presents, which, though kindly meant, were
not acceptable.

Vaucluse is in the diocese of Cavaillon, a small city about two miles
distant from our poet's retreat.
Philip de Cabassoles was the bishop, a
man of high rank and noble family. His disposition, according to
Petrarch's usual praise of his friends, was highly benevolent and
humane; he was well versed in literature, and had distinguished
abilities. No sooner was the poet settled in his retirement, than he
visited the Bishop at his palace near Vaucluse. The latter gave him a
friendly reception, and returned his visits frequently. Another much
estimated, his friend since their childhood, Guido Sette, also repaired
at times to his humble mansion, and relieved his solitude in the shut-up
valley. [G]

Without some daily and constant occupation even the bright mind of
Petrarch would have rusted, like the finest steel when it is left
unscoured. But he continued his studies with an ardour that commands our
wonder and respect; and it was at Vaucluse that he either meditated or
wrote his most important compositions. Here he undertook a history of
Rome, from Romulus down to Titus Vespasian. This Herculean task he never
finished; but there remain two fragments of it, namely, four books, De
Rebus Memorandis, and another tract entitled Vitarum Virorum Illustrium
Epitome, being sketches of illustrious men from the founder of Rome down
to Fabricius.

About his poem, Africa, I shall only say for the present that he began
this Latin epic at Vaucluse, that its hero is his idolized Roman, Scipio
Africanus, that it gained him a reputation over Europe, and that he was
much pleased with it himself, but that his admiration of it in time
cooled down so much, that at last he was annoyed when it was mentioned
to him, and turned the conversation, if he could, to a different
subject. Nay, it is probable, that if it had not been for Boccaccio and
Coluccio Salutati, who, long after he had left Vaucluse, importuned him
to finish and publish it, his Africa would not have come down to
posterity.

Petrarch alludes in one of his letters to an excursion which he made in
1338, in company with a man whose rank was above his wisdom. He does not
name him, but it seems clearly to have been Humbert II. , Dauphin of the
Viennois. The Cardinal Colonna forced our poet into this pilgrimage to
Baume, famous for its adjacent cavern, where, according to the tradition
of the country, Mary Magdalen passed thirty years of repentance. In
that holy but horrible cavern, as Petrarch calls it, they remained three
days and three nights, though Petrarch sometimes gave his comrades the
slip, and indulged in rambles among the hills and forests; he composed a
short poem, however, on St.