of my correspondence with my friends, which I had with me in my chest.
It was brought in, and added fuel to the flame. For among the letters
that were written to my contemporaries there are a few, inserted with
an eye to variety and for the sake of a little diversion in the midst
of my more serious labours, that are addressed to some of the more
illustrious men of ancient times. A reader who was not forewarned would
be amazed at these, finding names so old and of such renown mingled
with those of our own day. Two of them are to Cicero himself; one
criticising his character, the other praising his genius. These two
you read, while the others listened; and then the strife of words grew
warmer. Some approved of what I had written, admitting that Cicero
deserved my censure. But the old man stood his ground, more stubbornly
even than before. He was so blinded by love of his hero and by the
brightness of his name that he preferred to praise him even when he
was in the wrong; to embrace faults and virtues together, rather than
make any exceptions. He would not be thought to condemn anything at all
in so great a man. So instead of answering our arguments he rang the
changes again and again upon the splendour of Cicero's fame, letting
authority usurp the place of reason. He would stretch out his hand and
say imploringly, "Gently, I beg of you, gently with my Cicero." And
when we asked him if he found it impossible to believe that Cicero
had made mistakes, he would close his eyes and turn his face away and
exclaim with a groan, as if he had been smitten, "Alas! alas! Is my
beloved Cicero accused of doing wrong?" just as if we were speaking
not of a man but of some god. I asked him, accordingly, whether in his
opinion Tullius was a god, or a man like others. "A god," he replied;
and then, realising what he had said, he added, "a god of eloquence."
"Oh, very well!" I answered; "if he is a god, he certainly could not
have erred. However, I never heard him styled so before. And yet, if
Cicero calls Plato his god, why should not you in turn speak of Cicero
as yours?--except that it is not in harmony with our religious beliefs
for men to fashion gods for themselves as they may fancy." "I am only
jesting," said he; "I know that Tullius was a man, but he was a man of
godlike genius." "That is better," I responded; "for when Quintilian
called him heavenly he spoke no more than the truth. But then, if you
admit that he was a man, it follows necessarily that he could make
mistakes, and did so." As I spoke these words he shuddered and turned
away, as if they were aimed not at another man's reputation but at his
own life. What could I say, I who am myself so great an admirer of
Cicero's genius? I felt that the old scholar was to be envied for his
ardour and devotion, which had something of the Pythagorean savour. I
was rejoiced at finding such reverence for even one great man; such
almost religious regard, so fervent that to suspect any touch of human
weakness in its object seemed like sacrilege. I was amazed, too, at
having discovered a person who cherished a love greater than mine for
the man whom I always had loved beyond all others; a person who in old
age still held, deeply rooted in his heart, the opinions concerning
him which I remember to have entertained in my boyhood; and who,
notwithstanding his advanced years, was incapable of arguing that if
Cicero was a man it followed that in some cases, in many indeed, he
must have erred, a conclusion that I have been forced, by common sense
and by knowledge of his life, to accept at this earlier stage of my
development,--although this conviction does not alter the fact that the
beauty of his work delights me still, beyond that of any other writer.
Why, Tullius himself, the very man of whom we are speaking, took this
view, for he often bewailed his errors, bitterly. If, in our eagerness
to praise him, we deny that he thus understood himself, we deprive him
of a large part of his renown as a philosopher, the praise, namely,
that is due to self-knowledge and modesty.
To return, however, to that day; after a long discussion we were
compelled by the lateness of the hour to desist, and separated with
the question still unsettled. But as we parted you asked me to send
you from my first resting-place, inasmuch as the shortness of the
time would not let me attend to it just then, a copy of each of these
letters of mine, in order that you might look into the matter a little
more carefully, and be in a position to act as a mediator between the
parties, or, possibly, as a champion of Cicero's steadfastness and
consistency. I approve of your intention, and send the copies herewith.
I do so, strange to say, with a fear that I may be victorious, and a
hope that I may be vanquished. And one thing more: I must tell you that
if you do prove the victor you have a larger task on your hands than
you now imagine. For Annæus Seneca, whom I criticise in my very next
letter in a similar way, insists that you act as his champion too.
I have dealt familiarly with these great geniuses, and perhaps boldly,
but lovingly, but sorrowfully, but truthfully, I think[2]; with
somewhat more of truthfulness, in fact, than I myself relish. There are
many things in both of them that delight me, only a few that trouble
me. Of these few I felt constrained to write; perhaps to-day I should
feel otherwise. For, although I have grouped these letters together
at the end, it is only because their subject-matter is so unlike the
others; they came from the anvil long ago.
The fact is, I still grieve over the fate of these great men; but I
do not lament their faults any the less because of that. Furthermore,
I beg you to note that I say nothing against Seneca's private life,
nor against Cicero's attitude toward the state. Do not confuse the
two cases. It is Cicero alone whom we are discussing now; and I am
not forgetting that he as consul was vigilant and patriotic, and
cured the disease from which the republic was suffering; nor that as
a private citizen he always loved his country faithfully. But what
of his fickleness in friendship; and his bitter quarrels upon slight
provocation,--quarrels that brought ruin upon himself and good to no
one; and his inability to understand his own position and the condition
of the republic, so unlike his usual acumen; and, finally, the
spectacle of a philosopher, in his old age, childishly fond of useless
wrangling? These things I cannot praise. And remember that they are
things concerning which no unbiassed judgment can be formed, by you or
anyone else, without a careful reading of the entire correspondence of
Cicero, which suggested this controversy.[3]
May 13th, _en route_.
1: _Fam_., xxiv., 2.
2: This artificial repetition of the adversative conjunction is a
trick of style that Petrarch is very fond of.
3: This last sentence, with its schoolmasterly tone, is an interesting
revelation of Petrarch's feeling of superiority, in point of
scholarship, to all of his associates. It was a feeling that the facts
fully justified.
* * * * *
Of the two letters addressed directly to Cicero himself, and referred
to in the preceding epistle, one has already been given. The other is,
in part, as follows:
_To Marcus Tullius Cicero._[1]
If my earlier letter gave you offence,--for, as you often have
remarked, the saying of your contemporary in the _Andria_ is a faithful
one, that compliance begets friends, truth only hatred,--you shall
listen now to words that will soothe your wounded feelings and prove
that the truth need not always be hateful. For, if censure that is true
angers us, true praise, on the other hand, gives us delight.
You lived then, Cicero, if I may be permitted to say it, like a mere
man, but spoke like an orator, wrote like a philosopher. It was your
life that I criticised; not your mind, nor your tongue; for the one
fills me with admiration, the other with amazement. And even in your
life I feel the lack of nothing but stability, and the love of quiet
that should go with your philosophic professions, and abstention from
civil war, when liberty had been extinguished and the republic buried
and its dirge sung.
See how different my treatment of you is from yours of Epicurus,
in your works at large, and especially in the _De Finibus_. You
are continually praising his life, but his talents you ridicule. I
ridicule in you nothing at all. Your life does awaken my pity, as I
have said; but your talents and your eloquence call for nothing but
congratulation. O great father of Roman eloquence! not I alone but all
who deck themselves with the flowers of Latin speech render thanks unto
you. It is from your well-springs that we draw the streams that water
our meads. You, we freely acknowledge, are the leader who marshals us;
yours are the words of encouragement that sustain us; yours is the
light that illumines the path before us. In a word, it is under your
auspices that we have attained to such little skill in this art of
writing as we may possess....
You have heard what I think of your life and your genius. Are you
hoping to hear of your books also; what fate has befallen them, how
they are esteemed by the masses and among scholars? They still are in
existence, glorious volumes, but we of to-day are too feeble a folk
to read them, or even to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your
fame extends far and wide; your name is mighty, and fills the ears of
men; and yet those who really know you are very few, be it because the
times are unfavourable, or because men's minds are slow and dull, or,
as I am the more inclined to believe, because the love of money forces
our thoughts in other directions. Consequently right in our own day,
unless I am much mistaken, some of your books have disappeared, I fear
beyond recovery. It is a great grief to me, a great disgrace to this
generation, a great wrong done to posterity. The shame of failing to
cultivate our own talents, thereby depriving the future of the fruits
that they might have yielded, is not enough for us; we must waste and
spoil, through our cruel and insufferable neglect, the fruits of your
labours too, and of those of your fellows as well, for the fate that
I lament in the case of your own books has befallen the works of many
another illustrious man.
It is of yours alone, though, that I would speak now. Here are the
names of those among them whose loss is most to be deplored: the
_Republic_, the _Praise of Philosophy_, the treatises on the _Care of
Property_, on the _Art of War_, on _Consolation_, on _Glory_,--although
in the case of this last my feeling is rather one of hopeful
uncertainty than of certain despair. And then there are huge gaps in
the volumes that have survived. It is as if indolence and oblivion had
been worsted, in a great battle, but we had to mourn noble leaders
slain, and others lost or maimed. This last indignity very many of
your books have suffered, but more particularly the _Orator_, the
_Academics_, and the _Laws_. They have come forth from the fray so
mutilated and disfigured that it would have been better if they had
perished outright.
Now, in conclusion, you will wish me to tell you something about the
condition of Rome and the Roman republic: the present appearance of
the city and whole country, the degree of harmony that prevails, what
classes of citizens possess political power, by whose hands and with
what wisdom the reins of empire are swayed, and whether the Danube, the
Ganges, the Ebro, the Nile, the Don, are our boundaries now, or in very
truth the man has arisen who 'bounds our empire by the ocean-stream,
our fame by the stars of heaven,' or 'extends our rule beyond Garama
and Ind,' as your friend the Mantuan has said. Of these and other
matters of like nature I doubt not you would very gladly hear. Your
filial piety tells me so, your well-known love of country, which you
cherished even to your own destruction. But indeed it were better that
I refrained. Trust me, Cicero, if you were to hear of our condition
to-day you would be moved to tears, in whatever circle of heaven above,
or Erebus below, you may be dwelling. Farewell, forever.
Written in the world of the living; on the left bank of the Rhone, in
Transalpine Gaul; in the same year, but in the month of December, the
19th day.
1: _Fam_., xxiv., 4.
* * * * *
Over against the foregoing should be placed a part at least of the long
letter addressed to Homer. This will serve to correct the somewhat too
favourable impression of Petrarch's critical insight that the letters
to Cicero may have induced, and will reveal some of the limitations of
his scholarship.
_To Homer_[1]
Long before your letter[2] reached me I had formed an intention of
writing to you, and I should really have done it if it had not been
for the lack of a common language. I am not so fortunate as to have
learned Greek,[3] and the Latin tongue, which you once spoke, by
the aid of our writers,[4] you seem of late, through the negligence
of their successors, to have quite forgotten. From both avenues
of communication, consequently, I have been debarred, and so have
kept silence. But now there comes a man[5] who restores you to us,
single-handed, and makes you a Latin again.
Your Penelope cannot have waited longer nor with more eager
expectation for her Ulysses than I did for you. At last, though, my
hope was fading gradually away. Except for a few of the opening lines
of certain books, from which there seemed to flash upon me the face
of the friend whom I had been longing to behold, a momentary glimpse,
dim through distance, or, rather, the sight of his streaming hair, as
he vanished from my view,--except for this no hint of a Latin Homer
had come to me, and I had no hope of being able ever to see you face
to face. For as regards the little book that is circulated under your
name, while I cannot say whose it is I do feel sure that it is yours
only as it has been culled from you and accredited to you, and is not
your real work at all.[6] This friend of ours, however, if he lives,
will restore you to us in your entirety. He is now at work, and we are
beginning to enjoy not only the treasures of wisdom that are stored
away in your divine poems but also the sweetness and charm of your
speech. One fragment has come to my hands already, Grecian precious
ointment in Latin vessels....[7]
To turn now to details, I am very eager for knowledge, and consequently
was delighted beyond all measure and belief by what you wrote about
your instructors, of whom I had never before heard, although now I
shall reverence them because of the merits of their great pupil; and
about the origin of poetry, which you explain at the greatest length;
and about the earliest followers of the Muses, among whom, in addition
to the well-known dwellers upon Helicon, you place Cadmus, the son of
Agenor, and a certain Hercules, whether the great Alcides or not I do
not fully understand; and, finally, about the place of your nativity,
concerning which there used to be very vague and misty views here in
my country, and no great clearness, so far as I can see, among your
compatriots; about your wanderings, too, in search of knowledge,
into Phœnicia and Egypt, whither, several centuries after you, the
illustrious philosophers Pythagoras and Plato also made their way, and
the Athenian law-giver who in his late years wooed the Pierian Muses,
wise old Solon, who while he lived never ceased to admire you, and when
he died doubtless became one of your cherished friends; and, last of
all, about the number of your works, the majority of which even the
Italians, your nearest neighbours, have never so much as heard of.
As for the barbarians, who bound us upon two sides, and from whom I
would that we were separated not by lofty Alps alone but by the whole
wide sea as well, they scarcely have heard--I will not say of your
books, but even of your very name. You see how trivial a thing is this
wonderful fame which we mortals sigh for so windily....
And now what shall I say about the matter of imitation? When you found
yourself soaring so high on the wings of genius you ought to have
foreseen that you would always have imitators. You should be glad that
your endowments are such that many men long to be like you, although
not many can succeed. Why not be glad, you who are sure of holding
always the first place, when I, the least of mortals, am more than
glad, am in fact puffed up with pride, because I have grown great
enough for others--though I scarcely can believe that this is really
true--to desire to imitate and copy me? In my case the pride and joy
would only increase if among these imitators there should be found
some few who were capable of surpassing me. I pray--not your Apollo,
but the true God of Intellect whom I worship, to crown the efforts of
all who may deem it worth their while to follow after me, and to grant
that they may find it an easy thing to come up with me, and outstrip me
too....
But I am wandering. It was my intention to speak to you of Virgil,
than whom, as Flaccus says, this earth has produced no soul more
spotless; and to suggest to you, great master of us both, certain
excuses for his conduct.... I admit the truth of everything that you
say concerning him, but it does not necessarily follow that I lend a
sympathetic ear to the charges that you base upon this failure of his
to make anywhere any mention of your name, laden and bedecked though
he is with your spoils,--mention, you remind me, such as Lucan made,
remembering in grateful strains the honour due to Smyrna's bard. Far
from that, I am even going to suggest to you additional cause for
complaint. Flaccus also remembers you, in many a passage, and always
with the highest praise. In one place he exalts you above the very
philosophers; in another he assigns to you the highest seat among the
poets. Naso remembers you too, and Juvenal, and Statius. But why try
to mention all who mention Homer? There is scarcely one of our writers
but that belongs in that class. Why is it then, you will say, that I
find the one man from whom I deserved most gratitude proving so utterly
ungrateful? Before I answer you let me furnish you still another reason
for complaint. Observe that he was not equally ungrateful in every
case. Musæus and Linus and Orpheus are referred to more than once. So
also, and with even greater humility, Hesiod the Ascræan and Theocritus
of Syracuse. And finally, a thing that he never would have done if he
had had any touch of jealousy, he takes pains to speak of Varus, and
Gallus, and certain others of his contemporaries.
Well, have I aggravated sufficiently the resentment which I proposed
to assuage, or entirely remove? The natural conclusion, certainly, for
anyone to draw, if this were all that I had to say. But it is not;
we have not considered yet the reasons for all this, and given them
their due weight, and that we should always do, especially when we are
sitting in judgment upon others.
Is it not true, then, that he chose Theocritus for his guide and model
in the Bucolics, and Hesiod in the Georgics, and, having done so,
took pains to introduce the name of each in its appropriate place?
Yes, you will say; but after choosing me for his third model, in his
heroic poem, what was there to prevent his making some mention there,
in like manner, of my name? He would have done so, believe me, for he
was the gentlest and most unassuming of men, as is proved by all that
is written of him and all that we know of his daily life; but impious
death forbade. The others he had referred to wherever he thought of it
or found it convenient; for you, to whom he owed so much more, he was
reserving a place that had been determined not by mere chance but by
the most careful consideration. And what place, think you? What but
the most prominent and conspicuous of all? The end of his glorious
work!--it was for that that he was waiting; it was there that he was
intending to exalt you and your name to the stars in resounding verse,
and to hail you as his leader. What better place to praise a leader
than at the journey's end? You have good reason, then, for lamenting
his too early death, and so has the whole Italian world; but for
reproaching your friend, none whatever....
Now, in conclusion, I must run over the various little complaints that
are scattered up and down the whole length of your letter. You grieve
because you have been mangled so by your imitators. But do you not
see that it could not possibly have been otherwise? No one could deal
comprehensively with so great a genius. Then you mourn because your
name, which was held in great honour by the lawyers and physicians of
old, is despised by their successors of to-day. But you forget that
these professions are filled now by men of a very different stamp from
those who followed them in former times. If they were of the same
sort they would love and cherish the same things. So put away your
indignation and your grief, and be of good hope; for to have gained the
disfavour of the evil and the ignorant is to have given sure sign of
virtue and genius....
A word now with reference to your complaint that the valley of Fiesole
and the banks of the Arno can furnish only three men who know you and
love you. You ought not to wonder at this. It is enough; indeed, it is
a very great deal, more than I should have expected, to discover three
Pierian spirits in a city so entirely given up to gain. But even if you
think otherwise you need not be discouraged; it is a large and populous
place, and if you seek you will find there a fourth. And to these four
I could once have added a fifth, a man who well deserves to be honoured
thus, for the laurels of Peneus bind his brow--or of Alpheus rather.
But alas! the great Babylon beyond the Alps has contrived to steal
him away from us. To find five such men at one time and in one city,
is that, think you, a little thing? Search through other cities. Your
beloved Bologna that you sigh for,[8] hospitable though she is to all
who are of studious mind, has yet but one such person, though you seek
in every corner and crevice. Verona has two; Solmona one; and Mantua
one, if the heavens have not tempted him quite away from the things of
earth, for he has left your banner and enlisted under that of Ptolemy.
Rome herself, the capital of the world, has been drained of such
citizens almost to a man, strange though it seems. Perugia did produce
one, a man who might have made a name for himself; but he has neglected
his opportunities, and turned his back not on Parnassus only but on our
Apennines and Alps as well, and now, in old age, is leading a vagabond
life, in Spain, toiling as a copyist to earn his daily bread. And other
cities have given birth to others, but all of these whom I have known
have before now left this mortal home and migrated to that continuing
city which one day shall receive us all....
For a long while I have been talking to you just as if you were
present; but now the strong illusion fades away, and I realise how far
you are from me. There comes over me a fear that you will scarcely
care, down in the shades, to read the many things that I have written
here. Yet I remember that you wrote freely to me.
And now farewell, forever. To Orpheus, and Linus, and Euripides, and
all the others, I beg you to give my kindest greetings, when you come
again to your abode.
Written in the world above; in the _Midland_ between the famous rivers
Po and Ticino and Adda and others, whence some say our _Milan_ derives
its name; on the ninth day of October, in the year of this last age of
the world the 1360th.
1: _Fam_., xxiv., 12.
2: Someone had sent Petrarch an epistle that purported to come from
the shade of Homer. It must have been even more interesting than this
reply, in its unconscious revelation of mediæval limitations. Petrarch
took it very seriously. He often forgets in this answer that he is not
writing to Homer himself.
3: In Petrarch's day, as has been hinted above (p. 237), [Petrarch
laboured strenuously,...] there was no apparatus for the study of
Greek. Oral instruction, from Greek or Byzantine scholars, was the
only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such
instruction was very difficult to secure, as Petrarch's repeated
efforts and final failure prove. For his own statements concerning this
subject see _Fam_., xviii., 2.
4: The reference is of course to the Latin translations of Homer,
the _Odyssey_ of Livius Andronicus and the abridgment of the _Iliad_
mentioned just below, p. 254, note 1. (Your Penelope cannot have
waited...)
5: Leo Pilatus (or Leontius Pilatus, as Boccaccio writes the name), a
Calabrian, who, at the instance of Petrarch and Boccaccio, was making
at Florence at about this time a Latin prose version of the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_. For a good brief account of what is known concerning
Pilatus, with a few specimens of his translation, see Körting, _op.
cit_., i., 474 _sqq_.
6: The reference here is to the metrical abridgment of the _Iliad_
by Silius Italicus. This contains 1070 lines, half of them condensed
translation of passages from books I.-V., the remainder little more
than the driest epitome. Poor as it is, it was widely accepted in the
middle ages, in some confused sort of a way, as 'Homer.' But Petrarch
was able to look below the surface and see just what it was.
7: De Nolhac has shown (_op. cit_., pp. 342, 354) that Pilatus
probably had made for Petrarch alone, more than a year before this
epistle was written, a preliminary translation of the first five books
of the _Iliad._
8: Voigt argues from these words that the letter to which this of
Petrarch's is a reply came from Bologna. De Nolhac thinks it more
probable that it was written from Florence, by Boccaccio and his
friends.
* * * * *
With this, as throwing further light upon Petrarch's limitations, may
be placed the letter to his brother, upon the nature of poetry, to
which reference was made above in discussing the question of allegory:
_On the Nature of Poetry._
_To his Brother Gherardo._[1]
I judge, from what I know of your religious fervour, that you will
feel a sort of repugnance toward the poem which I enclose in this
letter, deeming it quite out of harmony with all your professions,
and in direct opposition to your whole mode of thinking and living.
But you must not be too hasty in your conclusions. What can be more
foolish than to pronounce an opinion upon a subject that you have not
investigated? The fact is, poetry is very far from being opposed to
theology. Does that surprise you? One may almost say that theology
actually is poetry, poetry concerning God. To call Christ now a lion,
now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will
find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I
cannot attempt to enumerate them. What indeed are the parables of our
Saviour, in the Gospels, but words whose sound is foreign to their
sense, or allegories, to use the technical term? But allegory is the
very warp and woof of all poetry. Of course, though, the subject matter
in the two cases is very different. That everyone will admit. In the
one case it is God and things pertaining to him that are treated, in
the other mere gods and mortal men.