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