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Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (1898)
Petrarch the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters - 1898 Author:Francesco Petrarca Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II PETRARCH AND HIS LITERARY CONTEMPORARIES Quotidie epistolas, quotidie carmina omnis in caput hoc nostri orbis angulus pluit; . . . jam nee Gallis modo, ... more »sed Graiis et Teutonis et Britannis tempestatibus litterarum pulsor, omnium ingeniorum arbiter, mei ipsius ignarus.—Fam., xiii., 7. THE following letters have been selected with a view to illustrating Petrarch's attitude toward the Italian language and literature, his estimate of the other writers of his time, especially Dante and Boccaccio, and, in general, his literary ideals, and habits of work. An effort has been made to secure some continuity by the arrangement of the matter and the accompanying explanations, but any strictly logical presentation is precluded by the miscellaneous contents of the letters themselves. The reader is left, in most cases, to make his own deductions from Petrarch's words, but a brief excursus is added here and there, with the hope of emphasising some of the more important points. The first two letters would indicate that there was a wide-spread interest in literature during the fourteenth century, and that Petrarch was looked upon as the highest tribunal before which the aspirant could lay his work. Few of his letters are more instructive or are writtenin a lighter and more felicitous tone than the one which follows. Petrarch's Passion for Work—The Trials of a Man of Letters To the Abbot of St. Benigno ' Strangely enough I long to write, but do not know what or to whom. This inexorable passion has such a hold upon me that pen, ink, and paper, and work prolonged far into the night, are more to my liking than repose and sleep. In short, I find myself always in a sad and languishing state when I am not writing, and, anomalous though it seems, I labour when I rest, and find my res...« less