only to yourself be true: for how shall any one be constant to him who
is inconstant to himself?
_Petrarch._ I will be true to myself, so far as in me lies. I will
pull myself together and collect my scattered wits, and make a great
endeavour to possess my soul in patience. But even while we speak, a
crowd of important affairs, though only of the world, is waiting my
attention.
_S. Augustine._ For the common herd of men these may be what to
them seem more important; but in reality there is nothing of more
importance, and nothing ought to be esteemed of so much worth. For,
of other trains of thought, you may reckon them to be not essential
for the soul, but the end of life will prove that these we have been
engaged in are of eternal necessity.
_Petrarch._ I confess they are so. And I now return to attend to those
other concerns only in order that, when they are discharged, I may come
back to these.
I am not ignorant that, as you said a few minutes before, it would be
much safer for me to attend only to the care of my soul, to relinquish
altogether every bypath and follow the straight path of the way of
salvation. But I have not strength to resist that old bent for study
altogether.
_S. Augustine_. We are falling into our old controversy. Want of will
you call want of power. Well, so it must be, if it cannot be otherwise.
I pray God that He will go with you where you go, and that He will
order your steps, even though they wander, into the way of truth.
_Petrarch._ O may it indeed be as you have prayed! May God lead me safe
and whole out of so many crooked ways; that I may follow the Voice that
calls me; that I may raise up no cloud of dust before my eyes; and,
with my mind calmed down and at peace, I may hear the world grow still
and silent, and the winds of adversity die away.
_Francis Petrarch, Poet, Most illustrious Orator; his Book, which
he entitled Secretum; in which a Three days' Discussion concerning
Contempt of the World is carried on._ Finis.
[1] _De Senectute_, xxiii.
[2] _Æneid_, vi. 428-29.
[3] "Tarda sit illa dies et nostro serior ævo."--_Met._ xv. 868.
[4] This refers to the second Scipio Africanus, and the words alluded
to are these: "It is his goodness that I loved, and that is not dead;
it lives not alone for me, who have had it ever before my eyes, but it
will go down in all its beauty to those who come after. Whenever a man
is meditating some great undertaking, or shall be nourishing in his
breast great hopes, his shall be the memory, and his the image that
such a man shall take for a pattern."--Cicero, _De Amicitiâ_, xxvii.
[5] _Æneid,_ i. 328-29.
[6] Cicero, _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 18.
[7] Quoted from Attilius in Cicero's _Letters to Atticus,_ xiv.
[8] Ovid, _Amores_, I. x. 13.
[9] _Æneid_, vi. 540-43.
[10] _Æneid_, i. 613
[11] Seneca, _De Beneficiis,_ vii. 8.
[12] Terence, _Phormio_, 949.
[13] _Tusculan Orations_, iv. 35
[14] Academica.
[15] Quoted from Tusculan Orations, iii. 26.
[16] Simone Martini, of Siena.
[17] A river in Thessaly.
[18] A town in Phocis, near Delphi.
[19] Terence, _Eunuch,_ 59-63.
[20] Terence, _Eunuch,_ 70-73.
[21] _Ibid.,_ 56.
[22] _Ibid._ 57, 58.
[23] _Tusculan Orations_, iv. 35.
[24] _De Remediis Amoris,_ I. 162.
[25] _Æneid,_ iii. 44.
[26] _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 35.
[27] _Æneid_, iv. 69-73.
[28] Seneca, _Epist._, xxviii.
[29] Horace, _Epistles_, Book I., _Epist._, xi. 27 (Conington).
[30] Horace, _Epist.,_ Book I., xi. 25-26 (Conington).
[31] Seneca's _Epist.,_ lxiv.
[32] _Æneid,_ vi. 126-27.
[33] _Georgics,_ ii. 136-39.
[34] Ildebrandino di Conte, Bishop of Padua, _Epist._ cxi. 25.
[35] Petrarch's _Penitential Psalms,_ iii. (translated by George
Chapman).
[36] Ovid's _De Remediis Amoris_, 579-80.
[37] Petrarch's _Epistles,_ i. 7.
[38] Quoted in Seneca's treatise, _De Animæ tranquillitate_, xv.
[39] Seneca's _Epistles,_ ii.
[40] _Tusculan Orations,_ iv. 35.
[41] The text here is obscure.
[42] Suetonius Domitian, xviii.
[43] Virgil, _Eclogues,_ i. 29.
[44] _Æneid,_ vi. 615-16.
[45] _Ibid.,_ ii. 265.
[47] Seneca, _Epistles,_ iv.
[48] Petrarch's _Africa_, vii. 292.
[49] Seneca, _De Natura Quæstiones,_ i. 17.
[50] Macrobius _Saturnalia,_ ii 5.
[51] Horace, _Epistles_, i 4, 13.
[52] PS. cxxxi. 9.
[53] Cicero, _Pro Marcello_, viii.
[54] Seneca, _Letters_.
[55] _De Senectute_, xx.
[56] _Ibid.,_ xix.
[57] Horace, _Odes,_ iv. 7,17.
[58] _De Senectute_, xix.
[59] _Africa_, ii. 361, 363.
[60] _Satira,_ x. 145.
[61] _Africa,_ ii. 481, &c.
[62] _Africa_, ii. 455-6.
[63] _Ibid._, ii. 464-5.
[64] Terence's _Eunuch,_ 41.
[65] _Africa_, ii 486.
[66] Horace, _Odes_, iv. 7, 13-16.
[67] Palinurus.
[68] <b>Æneid</b>, iii. 515.
[69] _Georgics_, ii. 58.
[70] Petrarch's Epist., I. iv. 91-2.
[71] _Tusculan Orations_, i. 39.
[72] _Tusculan Orations_, i. 30.