No More Learning

He represents the abuses, the
chicanery, and mercenary practices of the law, as inconsistent with
every principle of candour and honesty.

When Petracco observed that his son made no great progress in his legal
studies at Montpelier, he removed him, in 1323, to Bologna, celebrated
for the study of the canon and civil law, probably imagining that the
superior fame of the latter place might attract him to love the law. To
Bologna Petrarch was accompanied by his brother Gherardo, and by his
inseparable friend, young Guido Settimo.

But neither the abilities of the several professors in that celebrated
academy, nor the strongest exhortations of his father, were sufficient
to conquer the deeply-rooted aversion which our poet had conceived for
the law. Accordingly, Petracco hastened to Bologna, that he might
endeavour to check his son's indulgence in literature, which
disconcerted his favourite designs. Petrarch, guessing at the motive of
his arrival, hid the copies of Cicero, Virgil, and some other authors,
which composed his small library, and to purchase which he had deprived
himself of almost the necessaries of life. His father, however, soon
discovered the place of their concealment, and threw them into the fire.
Petrarch exhibited as much agony as if he had been himself the martyr of
his father's resentment. Petracco was so much affected by his son's
tears, that he rescued from the flames Cicero and Virgil, and,
presenting them to Petrarch, he said, "Virgil will console you for the
loss of your other MSS. , and Cicero will prepare you for the study of
the law. "

It is by no means wonderful that a mind like Petrarch's could but ill
relish the glosses of the Code and the commentaries on the Decretals.

At Bologna, however, he met with an accomplished literary man and no
inelegant poet in one of the professors, who, if he failed in persuading
Petrarch to make the law his profession, certainly quickened his relish
and ambition for poetry. This man was Cino da Pistoia, who is esteemed
by Italians as the most tender and harmonious lyric poet in the native
language anterior to Petrarch.

During his residence at Bologna, Petrarch made an excursion as far as
Venice, a city that struck him with enthusiastic admiration. In one of
his letters he calls it "_orbem alterum_.
" Whilst Italy was harassed, he
says, on all sides by continual dissensions, like the sea in a storm,
Venice alone appeared like a safe harbour, which overlooked the tempest
without feeling its commotion. The resolute and independent spirit of
that republic made an indelible impression on Petrarch's heart. The
young poet, perhaps, at this time little imagined that Venice was to be
the last scene of his triumphant eloquence.

Soon after his return from Venice to Bologna, he received the melancholy
intelligence of the death of his mother, in the thirty-eighth year of
her age. Her age is known by a copy of verses which Petrarch wrote upon
her death, the verses being the same in number as the years of her life.
She had lived humble and retired, and had devoted herself to the good of
her family; virtuous amidst the prevalence of corrupted manners, and,
though a beautiful woman, untainted by the breath of calumny. Petrarch
has repaid her maternal affection by preserving her memory from
oblivion. Petracco did not long survive the death of this excellent
woman. According to the judgment of our poet, his father was a man of
strong character and understanding. Banished from his native country,
and engaged in providing for his family, he was prevented by the
scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising
to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his
admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally
neglected, was a proof of his superior mind.

Petrarch quitted Bologna upon the death of his father, and returned to
Avignon, with his brother Gherardo, to collect the shattered remains of
their father's property. Upon their arrival, they found their domestic
affairs in a state of great disorder, as the executors of Petracco's
will had betrayed the trust reposed in them, and had seized most of the
effects of which they could dispose. Under these circumstances, Petrarch
was most anxious for a MS. of Cicero, which his father had highly
prized. "The guardians," he writes, "eager to appropriate what they
esteemed the more valuable effects, had fortunately left this MS.