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