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