No More Learning

Their date is not marked in them, but they were certainly written
shortly before his death. None of them possess any particular interest,
excepting that always in which he mentions the Decameron.

It seems at first sight not a little astonishing that Petrarch, who had
been on terms of the strictest friendship with Boccaccio for twenty-four
years, should never till now have read his best work. Why did not
Boccaccio send him his Decameron long before? The solution of this
question must be made by ascribing the circumstance to the author's
sensitive respect for the austerely moral character of our poet.

It is not known by what accident the Decameron fell into Petrarch's
hands, during the heat of the war between Venice and Padua. Even then
his occupations did not permit him to peruse it thoroughly; he only
slightly ran through it, after which he says in his letter to Boccaccio,
"I have not read your book with sufficient attention to pronounce an
opinion upon it; but it has given me great pleasure. That which is too
free in the work is sufficiently excusable for the age at which you
wrote it, for its elegant language, for the levity of the subject, for
the class of readers to whom it is suited. Besides, in the midst of much
gay and playful matter, several grave and pious thoughts are to be
found. Like the rest of the world, I have been particularly struck by
the beginning and the end. The description which you give of the state
of our country during the plague, appeared to me most true and most
pathetic. The story which forms the conclusion made so vivid an
impression on me, that I wished to get it by heart, in order to repeat
it to some of my friends. "

Petrarch, perceiving that this touching story of Griseldis made an
impression on all the world, had an idea of translating it into Latin,
for those who knew not the vulgar tongue. The following anecdote
respecting it is told by Petrarch himself:--"One of his friends, a man
of knowledge and intellect, undertook to read it to a company; but he
had hardly got into the midst of it, when his tears would not permit him
to continue. Again he tried to resume the reading, but with no better
success.
"

Another friend from Verona having heard what had befallen the Paduan,
wished to try the same experiment; he took up the composition, and read
it aloud from beginning to end without the smallest change of voice or
countenance, and said, in returning the book, "It must be owned that
this is a touching story, and I should have wept, also, if I believed it
to be true; but it is clearly a fable. There never was and there never
will be such a woman as Griseldis. "[N]

This letter, which Petrarch sent to Boccaccio, accompanied by a Latin
translation of his story, is dated, in a MS. of the French King's
library, the 8th of June, 1374. It is perhaps, the last letter which he
ever wrote. He complains in it of "mischievous people, who opened
packets to read the letters contained in them, and copied what they
pleased. Proceeding in their licence, they even spared themselves the
trouble of transcription, and kept the packets themselves. " Petrarch,
indignant at those violators of the rights and confidence of society,
took the resolution of writing no more, and bade adieu to his friends
and epistolary correspondence, "Valete amici, valete epistolae. "

Petrarch died a very short time after despatching this letter. His
biographers and contemporary authors are not agreed as to the day of his
demise, but the probability seems to be that it was the 18th of July.
Many writers of his life tell us that he expired in the arms of Lombardo
da Serigo, whom Philip Villani and Gianozzo Manetti make their authority
for an absurd tradition connected with his death. They pretend that when
he breathed his last several persons saw a white cloud, like the smoke
of incense, rise to the roof of his chamber, where it stopped for some
time and then vanished, a miracle, they add, clearly proving that his
soul was acceptable to God, and ascended to heaven. Giovanni Manzini
gives a different account. He says that Petrarch's people found him in
his library, sitting with his head reclining on a book. Having often
seen him in this attitude, they were not alarmed at first; but, soon
finding that he exhibited no signs of life, they gave way to their
sorrow. According to Domenico Aretino, who was much attached to
Petrarch, and was at that time at Padua, so that he may be regarded as
good authority, his death was occasioned by apoplexy.