Читать книгу Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters - Франческо Петрарка - Страница 3

"La formule qui définit le mieux Pétrarque est celle qui le désigne comme "le premier homme moderne." Par la direction de sa pensée, il échappe presque entièrement à l'influence de son siècle et de son milieu, ce qui est sans doute la marque la moins contestable du génie."—PIERRE DE NOLHAC.

History is the memory of mankind; it far outruns the narrow range of our own personal recollections and enables us to participate consciously in a process of change so impressive in its vast length and complexity as to reduce the experiences of our own generation to a mere incident. It makes it possible for us to see not only how to-day is growing out of yesterday, and this year out of last, but how the nineteenth century prepared the way for the twentieth, the eighteen for the nineteenth, and so on, back and back to the very beginnings of man's lineage. No one of us has precisely the same experiences two days in succession, and yet amid the most considerable vicissitudes of life we always carry over from day to day and year to year a great part of our habits and convictions,—which constitute what others call our character. The life of a people, although much more stable than that of most of its members, is always slowly and irrevocably altering; it is in the main a perpetuation of the old but always possesses some element of the new, since the individuals who compose a nation, as well as the conditions under which they live, are always changing.

The historian should reckon with both the old and the new in tracing man's past; he must show not only how things have changed but how they have remained the same. The mass of hoary tradition and ancient custom which enters so generously into every stage of civilisation, no matter how progressive, often, however, escapes his observation. Successful historians are men of letters who have something of the poet, the dramatist or the story-teller in them, and in order to construct a narrative which has any chance of appealing to their readers they are forced, following the example of the playwright, to divide the past into periods, like the scenes in a play, and assign to each a dominant motive. In doing this they are tempted greatly to exaggerate the exceptional and novel. Moreover, since the historian can include in his story but a very small part of the multitudinous experiences of mankind during the period with which he is dealing, he inevitably selects what will fit into a coherent narrative and neglects all the rest; he must introduce order where there is essential confusion, lucidity where there is obscurity, and discover simplicity where their is inextricable complexity.

As a result of this highly artificial nature of the historian's work—of which he himself is usually unconscious—historical legends arise, which by reason of their dramatic character and their plausible simplicity are eagerly and widely accepted, and only reluctantly abandoned when some of the vast number of facts which have been neglected in their formation are given an opportunity to assert themselves. The pretty myth of the common origin and gradual dispersion of all those peoples whose language belongs to the Indo-European group has been dissipated by recollecting that a common language does not necessarily imply a common racial origin. The legend that Luther first translated the Bible into German vanishes before a list of the numerous editions of German Bibles printed during the fifty years previous to his undertaking. The publication of Napoleon's letters add too many facts to permit one longer to accept what Thiers and John S. C. Abbott say of him. A similar fate awaits the Renaissance; that, too, has assumed the form of a myth, which is threatened by a consideration of certain obvious facts which its authors innocently, but none the less fatally, overlooked.

As this word is used in histories of literature, art, and philosophy, it implies a freeing of man's mind from the shackles of the Middle Ages; he discovers himself and the world in all its beauty and interest; he shakes off religious dependence and becomes self-reliant; he casts aside the cowl and goes forth joyfully into the sunlight. This awakening has been attributed to a revived interest in the neglected works of the classical authors. They were potent, it has been assumed, to bring new life into a paralysed world, so soon as they become the object of passionate study and emulation. It was they, it has been claimed, that dispelled the gloomy superstition of the Dark Ages and aroused a buoyant spirit of Hellenism which enabled men to soar above the fruitless subtleties of Scholastic Theology.

This conception of the Renaissance is much more recent in origin than is usually supposed; it is scarcely more than fifty years old, and finds its first clear presentation in the well-known Civilisation of the Renaissance, which the Basel professor, Jacob Burckhardt, published in 1860. Fifteen years later John Addington Symonds began to issue his stately series of volumes on The Renaissance in Italy. The charm of his style served to popularise the conception of a distinctive period during which Europe awoke from its winter sleep and developed those traits of character which we deem essentially modern. For a generation or more the Renaissance has been the theme of innumerable popular books and lectures and has constituted a recognised "epoch" in manuals of historical instruction.

That it is a convenient term no one will deny! The civilisation of the Italian city states in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, from Dante to Machiavelli, from Giotto to Raphael, presents so much of rich delight that we ought to have a suitable name for it all. In this sense the expression, Renaissance, will probably continue to be used; but it is safe to predict that as we gain fuller insight into the conditions which preceded and followed this period it will be ranked much lower than hitherto as a time of decisive progress in human knowledge and ideals. Neither Burckhardt nor Symonds were cognisant of the extraordinary achievements of what they called vaguely the Middle Ages. And both of them were so classical-minded as to have but an inadequate appreciation of how slight were the intellectual changes of the Renaissance compared with those that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the results of which make the world in which we live what it is.

It is clear enough to historical students of to-day that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries offer the spectacle of a far more unmistakable awakening than does the so-called Renaissance. These centuries witnessed the development of the towns, the revival of the Roman Law, the founding of the universities, in which the encyclopædic works of the most learned, penetrating, and exacting of all ancient thinkers—Aristotle—were made the basis of a liberal education; and they beheld the literary birth of those vernacular languages which were one day to displace the speech of the Romans. These centuries devised, moreover, a new, varied, and lovely style of architecture, sculpture, and ornament, which still fills us with wonder and delight; they carried the knowledge of natural things and the practical arts beyond the point reached by Greeks or Romans; they sketched out the great career of experimental and applied science, which was hidden from the ancients and which is one of the main revolutionising forces of our day.

When we consider these and other achievements which preceded the Renaissance we are forced to ask what did it contribute that was equally important and distinctive? This question is a difficult one. Neither Burckhardt nor Symonds were in a position even to ask it, and only recently are students in this field setting themselves to re-examine more carefully and fully the facts, and place the achievements of the period in proper relation to what went before and what came after.[1]

One thing at least is clear. The knowledge of the Greek language had died out in western Europe with the disruption of the Roman Empire, and except in so far as Greek thought and taste had become embodied in Latin, it was lost for several hundreds of years. In the thirteenth century Aristotle's works were put into Latin, and so deeply did they impress their readers that they were assigned a supreme place, alongside the Bible and the Church and Roman Law. Two centuries later a great part of the Greek classics, Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and above all Plato, were brought from Constantinople, translated into Latin and made available for such scholars as cared to read them. This was the great literary work of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile every vestige of Latin literature was being hunted out, copied, and edited. There was not a great deal to be found that had not been known and read more or less all along, but the sense of its preciousness increased and a conviction developed that it was far better than anything that had been produced since the German Barbarians broke up the Roman Empire. The scholars who carried on this work had much to say of humanitas, by which they meant the culture to which man alone, of all creatures, is able to aspire. Cicero uses the word in this sense, and they found it defined for them by Aulus Gellius, a compiler who lived under Marcus Aurelius. Culture to them was in the main what it has been to the classical-minded ever since—namely, familiar intercourse with the best authors of Greece and Rome.

The Humanists did not, however, at once cast off the mediæval modes of thought. They ranged on their library shelves side by side with the pagan classics, the works of the Greek and Latin Christian fathers; they fell under the spell of Neoplatonism and deemed Plotinus and Porphyry legitimate interpreters of Plato. They were not even proof against the crude superstitions and futilities of the Jewish Cabbala.

The rôle of classical literature in the development of thought and taste is momentous, but it has served to hamper as well as to forward the progress of knowledge and the increase of insight. The classics have to-day worn out their welcome in many quarters. The more bigoted among the classicists of our own time have little of the truly Hellenic about them. Greece in its finest period owed its greatness partly to its frank use of its own vernacular language, partly to its exceptional freedom from tradition and routine. The classicist, on the contrary, would have us base our education upon dead languages and adhere piously to tradition, and routine. The Greek writers of the fifth century before Christ were free and progressive; their modern retainers are too often ultra-conservative and indifferent to the glowing opportunities of their own time.

But their position in any case is very different from that of the Humanists of the fifteenth century. To-day we can acquaint ourselves with the best that has been said and thought without going back to the masterpieces of antiquity. Each European people has developed its own national literature and given birth to geniuses able to assimilate, elaborate, and augment the older heritage in modern speech and modern literary forms. So the importance of the revival of classical scholarship five hundred years ago is not to be judged by the position that Greek and Roman books occupy in our intellectual life to-day. However conscious one may be of the limitations of classical thought and the obstacles which its unconditional admirers have opposed to natural and salutary intellectual readjustments, no one will have any inclination to underrate its vast significance in the development of modern culture.

Francesco Petrarch is generally accorded the distinction of being the first great leader in the revival of classical literature. He did not live to see the incoming of the Greek books, but he made a vain effort to learn the language and fully realised its importance. He was, moreover, untiring in promoting the study of Roman literature and writes to his dearest friend Boccaccio: "I certainly will not reject the praise which you bestow upon me for having stimulated in many instances, not only in Italy but perchance beyond its confines, the pursuit of studies such as ours, which have suffered neglect for so many centuries. I am indeed one of the oldest among us who are engaged in the cultivation of these subjects."[2]

But Petrarch's claim upon our attention as the father of Humanism is only one—and that perhaps a minor one—among many. In his own humanity lies perhaps his chief charm: A poor mortal like ourselves, he tells us so persuasively and fully of his own feelings, his self contradictions and spiritual, conflicts, that, as we read his letters and "Confessions," we greet him across the gulf of centuries and recognise in him a man of like passions with ourselves. We can become more intimately acquainted with him than with any one in the whole history of mankind before his time, not excepting Cicero and Augustine. Those who know Petrarch, know him ordinarily only through his Italian verses, now somewhat out of style. But Petrarch the reformer, the first modern scholar, the implacable enemy of ignorance and superstition; Petrarch the counsellor of princes, the leader of men, and the idol of his time, is to be sought in his letters, of which some of the more striking are made available in this volume.

His incomparable sonnets seemed to their author in his later years little more than a youthful diversion. They earned for him among the illiterate multitude a reputation which he claimed to despise; they could never constitute the foundation for the scholar's fame to which he aspired. Had he foreseen that posterity would brush aside the great works in Latin which, cost him years of toil, and keep only his "popular trifles in the mother tongue" (nugellas meas vulgares), his chronic melancholy might have deepened into dark despair. Near the close of his life, in preparing a copy of his Italian verses for a friend, he says: "I must confess that I look with aversion upon the silly boyish things I at one time produced in the vernacular (vulgari juveniles ineptias). Of these I could wish everyone ignorant, myself included. Although their style may testify to a certain ability considering the period at which I composed them; their subject matter ill comports with the gravity of age. But what am I to do? They are in the hands of the public and are read more willingly than the serious works which with more highly developed faculties I have written since."[3]

A German scholar (Voigt) has gone so far as to declare that Petrarch would be no less bright a star in the history of the human mind, had he never written a verse of Italian. This very obvious exaggeration is perhaps both natural and salutary. The Latin works, especially the letters, are so fascinating and exhibit such new and important phases of his character and ideals, that those who have enthusiastically busied themselves with them have gradually come to accept the poet's repeated assertion that his Italian works were mere youthful trifles, of little interest as compared with his great Latin epic or his various treatises.[4] Yet the world has decided otherwise, and decided rightly. It has allowed over three hundred years to pass without demanding a new edition of those Latin works, by which the author sought to gain everlasting renown, while, on the other hand, hundreds of editions of the despised Canzoniere have been published, not only in the original but in many translations. For the poet finds his fullest expression in his greatest literary work, the Italian lyrics. No one really familiar with the letters will fail to recognise in them the author of the sonnets. We find there the same strength and weakness, the same genuine feeling, often disguised by mannerisms and traditional conceits, the same aspirations and conflicts, the same subjectivity and self-analysis. We have to do with a single great spirit revealing itself with a diversity and mobility of literary form known only to genius. Opening the Canzoniere, we find in the following lines sentiments which might have been despatched in an elegant epistle to his friend Nelli, or to "Lælius," or recorded in his Confessions.

Ma ben veggi' or sì come al popol tutto

Favola fui gran tempo: onde sovente

Di me medesmo meco mi vergogno:

E del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,

E 'l pentirsi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente

Che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.[5]

But even if it be admitted that the lyrics form Petrarch's greatest claim to renown, and that the letters often only reflect, as might be anticipated, sentiments familiar to the thoughtful reader of the Italian verses, yet the poems alone can never tell the whole story of their author's importance and influence. Literary ideals which have no place in the sonnets are to be found in the letters; in them we may study the reviver of a forgotten culture, and the prophet of an era of intellectual advance the direct results of which we still enjoy.

The Middle Ages furnish us no earlier example of the psychological analysis which we discover in both the verse and prose of Petrarch. His writings are the first to reveal completely a human soul, with its struggles, its sufferings, and its contradictions. "Petrarch was a master in one respect at least, he understood how to picture himself; through him the inner world first receives recognition; he first notes, observes, analyses, and sets forth its phenomena."[6] The all-pervading self-consciousness that meets us in the letters is sure to produce a painful impression as we first open them. It may, for a time, indeed, seem little better than common priggishness. But behind a thin veil of vanity and morbid sensitiveness we straightway discover a great soul grappling with the mystery of life. Baffled by the contradictions that it feels within itself, it gropes tremblingly towards a new ideal of earthly existence.

Petrarch was not content to live unquestioningly, adjusting his conduct to the conventional standard. He was constantly preoccupied with his own aims and motives. Nor was the problem that he confronted a simple one, for the old and the new were contending for supremacy within his breast. The mediæval conception of our mortal life was that of a brief period of probation, during which each played his obscure rôle in the particular group, guild, or corporation to which Providence had assigned him, bearing his burdens patiently in the beatific vision of a speedy reward in another and better world. Petrarch formally assented to this view but never accepted it. The preciousness of life's opportunity was ever before him. Life was certainly a preparation for heaven, but, he asked himself, was it not something more? Might there not be worthy secular aims? Might not one raise himself above those about him and earn the approval of generations to come, as the great writers of antiquity had done? His longing to obtain an earthly reputation, and the temptation consciously to direct his energies toward achieving posthumous fame, seemed to him now a noble instinct, and again where tradition weighed heavily upon him, a godless infatuation. In order to put the matter before himself in all its aspects he prepared an imaginary dialogue, after the model offered by Boëthius and Cicero, between himself and Saint Augustine. This little book he called his Secret, as he did not desire to have it enumerated among the works he had written for fame's sake: and here he recorded his spiritual conflicts for his own personal good.[7] Of the contents of this extraordinary confession something will be said later. Its very existence is an historic fact of the utmost significance.[8]

Petrarch aspired to be both a poet and a scholar, and it is not easy to determine definitely whether in his later years he looked upon his great Latin epic or upon his historical works as his best title to fame. He often refers to the high mission of the poet, and in the address that he delivered at Rome, when he received the laurel crown, he took for his subject the nature of poetry. For him poetry embraced only Latin verse in its classical form. The popular, rhyming cadences of the Middle Ages, in which the rhythmic accent followed not quantity but the prose accent,[9] doubtless seemed to him no more deserving of the name of poetry than Dante's Commedia or his own Italian sonnets. We shall have occasion later to describe his peculiar conception of allegory.[10]

As a scholar Petrarch had no definite bent. "Among the many subjects which have interested me," he says, "I have dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to have been born in any other period than our own. In order to forget my own time I have constantly striven to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I have delighted in history."[11] We shall not then be going far astray if we style Petrarch a classical philologist, using the term in a broad sense, and always remembering that an enlightened and enthusiastic classical philologist was just what the world much needed in the fourteenth century.

Although the letters are by far the most interesting of Petrarch's Latin productions, the reader may be curious to know something of the character and extent of the other long-forgotten books which the author trusted would earn him eternal fame. No complete edition of his works has ever been published,[12] but were they brought together, they would fill some seventeen volumes of the size of the present one, and we may imagine that the publishers would issue them somewhat as follows:

Vols. I-VIII, The Letters.

IX-X, Phisicke against Fortune, as well Prosperous as Adverse[13] (De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ).

XI, Historical Anecdotes (Rerum Memorandum Libri IV).

XII, Lives of Famous Men.

XIII, The Life of Julius Cæsar.[14]

XIV, The Life of Solitude and On Monastic Leisure.

XV, Miscellany, including the Confessions (De Contemptu Mundi seu Suum Secretum), Invectives, Addresses, and Minor Essays.

XVI, Latin Verse, comprising the Africa, the Eclogues, and sixty-seven Metrical Epistles.

XVII, The Italian Verse, comprising the Sonnets, Canzone, and Occasional Poems.

Of the Latin works only one can be said to have enjoyed any considerable popularity. Of the Antidotes for Good and Evil Fortune there were over twenty Latin editions issued from 1471 to 1756.[15] And besides the Latin original, translations exist in English, Bohemian, French, Spanish, Italian, and several in German. Yet only one or two new editions have been demanded during the past two hundred and fifty years. The first part of the work is destined to establish the vanity of all earthly subjects of congratulation, from the possession of a chaste daughter to the proprietorship of a flourishing hennery. In the second part comfort is administered to those who have lost a wife or child, or are suffering from toothache, a ruined reputation, the fear of lingering death, or are painfully conscious that they are growing too fat. What seems to us mere cant and cynical commonplace may well have gratified a generation that delighted in the frescos of the cemetery at Pisa, but the popularity of the book naturally waned just as Dances of Death lost their charm. Yet the essays are not entirely without interest,[16] and their variety and paradoxicalness, if nothing else, may still hold the attention.

The two works upon which Petrarch probably based his literary reputation were the long Latin epic, the Africa, and his Lives of Famous Men. These are often referred to in his correspondence, especially the Africa. This was, however, never finished, and in his later years came to be a subject which the author could not hear mentioned without a sense of irritation. The poem was printed half a dozen times in the sixteenth century.[17] The biographical work fared much worse, and was, with the exception of the Life of Cæsar, not printed until our own day.[18]

Among the lesser works, the Confessions and an essay on The Life of Solitude were each printed eight or nine times before the year 1700. The letters also found readers. We have, however, but to glance at the list of editions of the Canzoniere to see how "these trivial verses, filled with the false and offensive praise of women," rather than his Latin epic and scholarly compilations, have served to keep his memory green. Thirty-four editions of the Italian verses were printed before 1500, and one hundred and sixty-seven in the sixteenth century. Since 1600 some two hundred more have appeared.[19]

It is not, however, in his formal treatises that the source of Petrarch's influence is to be found. They may aid us better to understand their author, but they can never explain the charm which he exercised over his contemporaries. He was not only an indefatigable scholar himself, but he possessed the power of stimulating, by his example, the scholarly ambition of those with whom he came in contact. He rendered the study of the Latin classics popular among cultivated persons, and by his own untiring efforts to discover the lost or forgotten works of the great writers of antiquity he roused a new and general enthusiasm for the formation of libraries and the critical determination of the proper readings in the newly found manuscripts.

It is hard for us to imagine the obstacles which confronted the scholars of the early Renaissance. They possessed no critical editions of the classics in which the text had been established by a comparison of all the available codices. They considered themselves fortunate to discover a single copy of even well-known authors. And so corrupt was the text, Petrarch declares, by reason of careless transcriptions, that should Cicero or Livy return and stumblingly read his own writings once more, he would promptly declare them the work of another, perhaps of a barbarian.[20]

While copies of the Æneid, of Horace's Satires, and of certain of Cicero's Orations, of Ovid, Seneca, and a few other authors, were apparently by no means uncommon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it seemed to Petrarch, who had learned through the references of Cicero, Quintilian, Saint Augustine, and others, something of the original extent of Latin literature, that treasures of inestimable value had been lost by the shameful indifference of the Middle Ages. "Each famous author of antiquity whom I recall," he indignantly exclaims, "places a new offence and another cause of dishonour to the charge of later generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage."[21] The collection of a library was, then, the first duty of one whose mission it was to re-establish the world in its literary patrimony.

A man's books are not a bad measure of the man himself, provided he be what Lowell calls a book-man, and his collections be really a genuine expression of his preferences and not those of his grandfather or his bookseller. If this is true to-day, with the all-pervading spirit of commercial enterprise which constantly imposes upon our tastes, how much more true must it have been when Petrarch, with all his self-sacrificing enthusiasm and industry, brought together during a long life only two hundred volumes.[22] Books in those days were of course laboriously produced by hand. There was no device to secure uniformity in the copies of a work as they were slowly written off by the same or different persons. Each scribe inevitably made new mistakes which could be safely corrected only by a comparison with the author's manuscript. The average copyist was apparently hardly more careful than the type-setter of to-day. A book as it came from his hands was little better than uncorrected galley proof.

In one case, Petrarch tried for years to get one of his shorter works, The Life of Solitude, satisfactorily transcribed, so that he could send a copy of it to the friend to whom he had dedicated it. He writes:

"I have tried ten times and more to have it copied in such a way that, even if the style should not please either the ears or the mind, the eyes might yet be gratified by the form of the letters. But the faithfulness and industry of the copyists, of which I am constantly complaining and with which you are familiar, have, in spite of all my earnest efforts, frustrated my wishes. These fellows are verily the plague of noble minds. What I have just said must seem incredible. A work written in a few months cannot be copied in so many years! The trouble and discouragement involved in the case of more important books is obvious. At last, after all these fruitless trials, on leaving home, I put the manuscript into the hands of a certain priest to copy. Whether he will, as a priest, perform his duty conscientiously, or, as a copyist, be ready to deceive, I cannot yet say. I learn from the letters of friends that the work is done. Of its quality, knowing the habits of this tribe of copyists, I shall continue to harbour doubts until I actually see it. Such is the ignorance, laziness, or arrogance of these fellows, that, strange as it may seem, they do not reproduce what you give them, but write out something quite different."[23]

Each copy of a work had, therefore, before the invention of printing, its own peculiar virtues and vices. A correct and clearly written codex possessed charms which no modern "numbered" edition on wide-margined paper can equal. We have many indications of the affection which Petrarch felt for his books and which he instilled into others. Even his rustic old servant at Vaucluse learned to distinguish the various volumes, great and small. The old fellow would glow with satisfaction, his master tells us, when a book was put into his hands to be replaced upon the shelves; pressing it to his bosom, he would softly murmur the name of the author.[24] Petrarch's interest was, however, no selfish one; he fondly hoped that his collection would become the nucleus of a great public library, such as we find a century or two after his time. When he could no longer foster interest in his favourite studies by his own potent presence and by his letters to his friends and fellow-scholars, his books, with their careful annotations and textual corrections, would form a permanent incentive to progress.

He chose Venice as the most appropriate place to establish his library. The letter in which he offers to leave his books to that city gives us a clear notion of his purpose. Laying aside all regard for classical models, he addressed the Venetian Government in the current Latin of the chancery:

"Francesco Petrarca desires, if it shall please Christ and St. Mark, to bequeath to that blessed Evangelist the books he now possesses or may acquire in the future, on condition that the books shall not be sold or in any way scattered, but shall be kept in perpetuity in some appointed place, safe from fire and rain, in honour of the said saint and as a memorial of the giver, as well as for the encouragement and convenience of the scholars and gentlemen of the said city who may delight in such things. He does not wish this because his books are very numerous or very valuable, but is impelled by the hope that hereafter that glorious city may, from time to time, add other works at the public expense, and that private individuals, nobles, or other citizens who love their country, or perhaps even strangers, may follow his example and leave a part of their books, by their last will, to the said church. Thus it may easily fall out that the collection shall one day become a great and famous library, equal to those of the ancients. The glory which this would shed upon this State can be understood by learned and ignorant alike. Should this be brought about, with the aid of God and of the famous patron of your city, the said Francesco would be greatly rejoiced, and glorify God that he had been permitted to be, in a way, the source of this great benefit. He may write at greater length if the affair proceeds. That it may be quite clear that he does not mean to confine himself in so important a matter to mere words, he desires to accomplish what he promises, etc.

"In the meantime he would like for himself and the said books a house, not large, but respectable [honestam] in order that none of the accidents to which mortals are subject shall interfere with the realisation of his plan. He would gladly reside in the city if he can conveniently do so, but of this he cannot be sure, owing to numerous difficulties. Still he hopes that he may do so."[25]

September 4, 1362, the grand council determined to accept the offer of Petrarch, "whose glory," the document recites, "was such throughout the whole world that no one, in the memory of man, could be compared with him in all Christendom, as a moral philosopher and a poet." The expense for a suitable dwelling was to be met from the public treasury, and the officials of St. Mark's were ready to provide a proper place for the books.

Petrarch lived for several years, as we shall see, in the house furnished by the Venetian Government, and it was, until recently, believed that his books were sent to the city, and, to the disgrace of the Republic, allowed to perish from negligence. Tommasini, the author of a once esteemed life of Petrarch, reports the discovery in 1634, in a room of St. Mark's, of certain stray volumes nearly destroyed by moisture and neglect,[26] which he assumed to be the remains of Petrarch's original collection. This has recently been shown to be a mistake, for the books in question never belonged to Petrarch, many indeed dating from the next century. There is, in fact, no reason to suppose that his library ever reached Venice after his death.

M. Pierre de Nolhac has succeeded, by the most minute and painstaking study of Petrarch's handwriting and habits of annotation, in partially reconstructing a catalogue of his books. The fate of the poet's collection was a matter of vital interest to the literary men of his time. Immediately after his death, Boccaccio wrote to ask what had been done with the bibliotheca pretiosissima. Some, he said, reported one thing and some another. But the books evidently found their way to Padua, for it was there that Coluccio Salutati and others sent for copies, not only of Petrarch's own works, but of rare classics which he possessed, such as Propertius and the less known orations of Cicero. Petrarch's last tyrant-patron, Francesco di Carrara, Lord of Padua, had for several years been upon bad terms with Venice, and it is easy to understand why the famous library, once in his possession, was never delivered to St. Mark's, as its owner had intended. The prince appears to have sold many of the volumes, although he retained a choice selection for himself. A renewal of the wars with his neighbours brought upon him, however, a final calamity, and he was forced to cede all of his possessions, in 1388, to Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The latter carried off the precious books to Pavia, where he added them to his own important collection. One volume has been discovered by M. de Nolhac, which bears the half-obliterated name of Francesco di Carrara. But Pavia was in turn robbed of its treasures, for in 1499 the French seized them and transported them to Blois, whence they have found their way to Paris. Some twenty-six volumes in the National Library have been satisfactorily proven actually to have belonged to Petrarch, while Rome can boast of but six, and Florence, Venice, Padua, and Milan of one each. The rest may either have been destroyed, or be wanting in those characteristic traits by which they could be identified.

Petrarch's habit of annotating the books in which he was most interested[27] gives the volumes which have come down to us a certain autobiographical value, and M. de Nolhac's study of these extempore and informal impressions will fascinate every admirer of the premier humaniste. We cannot, of course, infer from the fragments of the library which can now be identified what the original collection included, but a careful study of his works and of the extant marginal glosses has led M. de Nolhac to the following conclusions. The library doubtless contained almost all the great Latin poets except Lucretius. Petrarch probably knew Tibullus only from an anthology. There were serious gaps in his Latin prose, but he had an especially good collection of the Latin historians. Tacitus, although known to Boccaccio, was quite missing, and he had only the more important portions of Quintiliano Institutes, which he much admired. Seneca was nearly complete, and he had most of the best-known works of Cicero, although the letters Ad Familiares and a number of the Orations were wanting. Of the early Christian Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine were prominent, but this section of his library contained relatively few authors, while the mediæval writers were very scarce indeed. The Letters of Abelard, some works of Hugh de Saint Victor, Dante's Commedia, and the Decameron of Boccaccio were, we know, included. Petrarch could not read Greek, but he possessed Latin versions of the Timæus of Plato, the Ethics and Politics, at least, of Aristotle, Josephus's Histories, and the translation of the Iliad and Odyssey that he and Boccaccio had had made. The want of Greek literature was the greatest weakness in his education; for, having no means of comparison, he was led to estimate falsely the value of the Latin classics.

In considering the powers of criticism which Petrarch exhibits in his discussion of the Latin language and literature, the study of which was his main occupation during a long life, we must not unconsciously allow ourselves to judge him by the scientific standard of to-day. Before we can give full credit to his genius we must recollect the incredible ignorance of his time. To give but one instance—an eminent professor in the University of Bologna, in a letter to Petrarch, gravely ranked Cicero among the poets, and assumed that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries.[28] A free fancy was the only prerequisite for establishing derivations. We find no less a student than Dante explicitly rejecting a correct etymology in order to substitute for it one which suited him better,[29] when he claims that nobile is derived from non vile instead of from nosco.

In order to understand the deep significance of Petrarch's scholarship, one must turn to a book like the Etymologies of the saintly Isidore of Seville, whose work was a standard treatise in the Middle Ages. To choose an example or two at random, we find that the lamb (Latin, agnus) owes its name to the fact that "it recognises [agnoscit] its mother at a greater distance than other animals, so that in even a very large herd it immediately bleats response to its parent's voice." Equi (horses) are so called because they were equal (æquabantur) when hitched to a chariot.[30] It may well be that Petrarch knew but little more about the science of language in the modern sense of the word than Isidore or the author of the Græcismus, another famous text-book of the period, but his spirit is the spirit of a scholar. Speculations of the kind above noted seemed to him fatuous and puerile, although he might have been entirely at a loss to suggest any more scientific derivations to replace the currently accepted ones. He distinguished instinctively between fact and fancy, and the reader will discover in his letters much sound criticism and an innate sense of fitness and proportion quite alien to the Middle Ages.

In no respect, indeed is his greatness more apparent than in his general rejection of the educational ideals of his times. He was as little in sympathy with the intellectual predilections of the period as was Voltaire with the contentions of Jansenist and Jesuit. He disliked dialectics, the most esteemed branch of study in the mediæval schools; he utterly disregarded Scotus and Aquinas, and cared not for nominalism or realism, preferring to derive his religious doctrines from the Scriptures and the half-forgotten church Fathers, his partiality for whom, especially for Augustine and Ambrose, is evident from his numerous references to their works. His neglect of the Schoolmen is equally patent. Lastly, he dared to assert that Aristotle, although a distinguished scholar, was not superior to many of the ancients, and was inferior at least to Plato. He ventured to advance the opinion that not only was Aristotle's style bad, but his views upon many subjects were quite worthless.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the powerful fascination which Aristotle exercised over the mediæval mind. Only the Scriptures and the stately compilations of the civil and canon law were classed with his works. His knowledge seemed all-embracing, and his dicta were accepted as unquestionable. He was "the Philosopher" (philosophus), "the master," as Dante calls him, "of them that know." Nor is his supremacy hard to understand. When his works reached Western Europe, at the end of the twelfth and the opening of the thirteenth century, partly through the Arabs of Spain and partly from Constantinople, men were filled with an eager, undiscriminating desire for knowledge. His treatises afforded both an acceptable method and the necessary data for interminable dialectical activity. His Metaphysics, Physics, Ethics, and the rest, supplied abundant material upon which his principles of logic might be brought to bear by a disputatious generation. So the greatest of inductive philosophers became the hero of a recklessly deductive age, which was both too indolent and too respectful of authority to add to or correct his observations. It was assumed that nothing remained to be done except to understand, expound, and comment upon the writings of a genius to whom all the secrets of nature and of man had been revealed. Even theology, a characteristic creation of the Middle Ages, was greatly affected, if not dominated, by Aristotle, so that Luther's first act of revolt took the form of an attack upon "that accursed heathen."

Some of his acquaintances in Venice were accustomed, during their conversations together, to suggest some problem of the Aristotelians or to talk about animals; Petrarch says:

"I would then either remain silent or jest with them or change the subject. Sometimes I asked, with a smile, how Aristotle could have known that, for it was not proven by the light of reason, nor could it be tested by experiment. At that they would fall silent, in surprise and anger, as if they regarded me as a blasphemer who asked any proof beyond the authority of Aristotle. So we bid fair to be no longer philosophers, lovers of the truth, but Aristotelians, or rather Pythagoreans, reviving the absurd custom which permits us to ask no question except whether he said it.... I believe, indeed, that Aristotle was a great man and that he knew much; yet he was but a man, and therefore something, nay, many things, may have escaped him. I will say more.... I am confident, beyond a doubt, that he was in error all his life, not only as regards small matters, where a mistake counts for little, but in the most weighty questions, where his supreme interests were involved. And although he has said much of happiness, both at the beginning and the end of his Ethics, I dare assert, let my critics exclaim as they may, that he was so completely ignorant of true happiness that the opinions upon this matter of any pious old woman, or devout fisherman, shepherd, or farmer, would, if not so fine-spun, be more to the point than his."[31]

Commonplace as these reflections seem to us, they resound in the history of culture like a decisive battle in the world's annals. Nor was it mere pettishness which led Petrarch to speak thus of the supreme authority of his age: the instincts and training which made it impossible for him to bow down and worship the Stagirite, implied a great intellectual revolution. Nowhere is the broadening effect of his intelligent and constant reading of the classics more apparent than in his estimate of Aristotle's relative greatness. He was far too intimately acquainted with the history of literature to feel for any one man the respect entertained for their master by the Schoolmen.

The so-called natural science of his day was scornfully put aside by Petrarch as unworthy the attention of a man of culture. Those fond of the subject, he tells us, "say much of beasts, birds, and fishes, discuss how many hairs there are on the lion's head and feathers in the hawk's tail, and how many coils the polypus winds about a wrecked ship; they expatiate upon the generation of the elephant and its biennial offspring, as well as upon the docility and intelligence of the animal and its resemblance to human-kind. They tell how the phœnix lives two or three centuries, and is then consumed by an aromatic fire, to be born again from its ashes." This characteristic mediæval lore he rejects as false, and sensibly declares that the accounts of such wonders as reach his part of the world relate to matters unfamiliar to those who describe them. Hence, such stories are readily invented and received by reason of the distance from the places where the phenomena are said to occur. "Even if all these things were true," he characteristically urges, "they help in no way toward a happy life, for what does it advantage is to be familiar with the nature of animals, birds, fishes, and reptiles, while we are ignorant of the nature of the race of man to which we belong, and do not know or care whence we come or whither we go?"[32]

The astrologers, so highly esteemed in his day, seemed to him mere charlatans, who were supported by the credulity of those who were madly curious to know what could not be known, and should not be known if it could. Cicero and Augustine had demonstrated the futility of the claims made by the mathematici, as they were long called, and Petrarch ratified their judgment; yet so general was the belief in their powers that astrology was taught in the universities of Italy.[33] Even the hard-headed despot of Milan once deferred a military expedition because an astrological friend of Petrarch's declared the proposed time to be unpropitious. The army had, however, scarcely started, with the approval of the astrologer, before such terrible and prolonged rains set in that only the personal courage and good fortune of the prince prevented a disaster. When Petrarch inquired of his friend how he made so grievous, a miscalculation, the astrologer replied that it was especially difficult to forecast the weather. He received the triumphant retort: "It is easier, then, to know what is going to happen to me alone or to some other individual several years hence, than that which threatens heaven and earth to-day or to-morrow!"[34]

Petrarch's good sense was once or twice tested to the utmost, and yet he refused to give a supernatural explanation even to startling personal experiences, such as still occasionally disturb the precarious adjustment of our generally accepted scheme of the universe. He gives two curious instances of prophetic visions that came true. On one occasion, he had left the bedside of a very dear friend, whose case had been pronounced hopeless by the physicians. Upon his falling into a troubled sleep the sick man appeared to him and announced that he would get the better of his malady if only he were not deserted. There was one already at hand, he said, who might save him. Hereupon Petrarch awoke to find one of the doctors at his door, who had come to comfort him for the loss of his friend. He thereupon compelled the reluctant physician to return to the sick-room: they immediately perceived hopeful signs in the condition of the patient, who was in due time completely restored to health.

The second dream that Petrarch narrates concerned his noble friend, Giacomo of Colonna, who while still a young man had been made Bishop of Lombez, a town not far from Toulouse. Petrarch was, at the time of which we are speaking, at Parma, separated from his friend, as he points out, by no inconsiderable stretch of country.

"Vague rumours of his illness had reached me, so that, swayed alternately by hope and fear, I was eagerly awaiting more definite news. I shudder even now as I recall it all; my eye rests upon the very spot where I saw him in the quiet of the night. He was alone, and crossed the brook that is running before me through my garden. I hastened to meet him, and in my surprise and astonishment I overwhelmed him with questions—whence he came, whither he was going, why he was in such haste, and entirely alone? He made no reply to my queries, but, smiling as was his wont when he spoke, he said: 'Do you remember how you were troubled by the storms of the Pyrenees, when you once spent some time with me beyond the Garonne?[35] I am worn out by them now, and have left them never to return. I go to Rome.' While saying this he had swiftly reached the limits of the enclosure. I pressed him to permit me to accompany him, but twice he gently repulsed me with a wave of the hand, and finally, with a strange change in his face and voice, said: 'Desist, I do not wish your companionship now.' Then I fixed my eyes upon him and recognised the bloodless pallor of death. Overcome by fright and sorrow, I cried out, so that, as I awoke at that very moment, I heard the last echoes of my own scream. I marked the day and told the whole story to the friends who were within reach and wrote about it to those absent. Twenty-five days later the announcement of his death reached me. Upon comparing the dates, I discovered that he had appeared to me upon the same day upon which he departed this life. His remains were carried to Rome three years later—I, however, neither suspected nor anticipated anything of the kind at the time of my dream. His spirit, as I ardently hope, triumphs in heaven, to which it has returned.

"But we've dreamed enough, let us awake! I will add but a word. It was not because, in a period of anxiety, first my friend and then my master appeared to me in a dream, that the one recovered and the other died. In both cases I simply seemed to behold what, in the one case, I dreaded and, in the other, desired, and fate coincided with my vision. I have, therefore, no more faith in dreams than Cicero, who said that for a single one which accidentally came true he was perplexed by a thousand false ones."[36]