No More Learning

The news of his decease made a deep impression throughout Italy; and, in
the first instance, at Arqua and Padua, and in the cities of the
Euganean hills. Their people hastened in crowds to pay their last duties
to the man who had honoured their country by his residence. Francesco da
Carrara repaired to Arqua with all his nobility to assist at his
obsequies. The Bishop went thither with his chapter and with all his
clergy, and the common people flocked together to share in the general
mourning.

The body of Petrarch, clad in red satin, which was the dress of the
canons of Padua, supported by sixteen doctors on a bier covered with
cloth of gold bordered with ermine, was carried to the parish church of
Arqua, which was fitted up in a manner suitable to the ceremony. After
the funeral oration had been pronounced by Bonaventura da Praga, of the
order of the hermits of St. Augustin, the corpse was interred in a
chapel which Petrarch himself had erected in the parish church in honour
of the Virgin. A short time afterwards, Francesco Brossano, having
caused a tomb of marble to be raised on four pillars opposite to the
same church, transferred the body to that spot, and engraved over it an
epitaph in some bad Latin lines, the rhyming of which is their greatest
merit. In the year 1637, Paul Valdezucchi, proprietor of the house and
grounds of Petrarch at Arqua, caused a bust of bronze to be placed above
his mausoleum.

In the year 1630, his monument was violated by some sacrilegious
thieves, who carried off some of his bones for the sake of selling them.
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.