Aristotle was a great man and that he knew much; yet he was but a man, and therefore something, nay, many things, may have escaped him. I will say more.... I am confident, beyond a doubt, that he was in error all his life, not only as regards small matters, where a mistake counts for little, but in the most weighty questions, where his supreme interests were involved. And although he has said much of happiness, both at the beginning and the end of his Ethics, I dare assert, let my critics exclaim as they may, that he was so completely ignorant of true happiness that the opinions upon this matter of any pious old woman, or devout fisherman, shepherd, or farmer, would, if not so fine-spun, be more to the point than his."[31]

Commonplace as these reflections seem to us, they resound in the history of culture like a decisive battle in the world's annals. Nor was it mere pettishness which led Petrarch to speak thus of the supreme authority of his age: the instincts and training which made it impossible for him to bow down and worship the Stagirite, implied a great intellectual revolution. Nowhere is the broadening effect of his intelligent and constant reading of the classics more apparent than in his estimate of Aristotle's relative greatness. He was far too intimately acquainted with the history of literature to feel for any one man the respect entertained for their master by the Schoolmen.

The so-called natural science of his day was scornfully put aside by Petrarch as unworthy the attention of a man of culture. Those fond of the subject, he tells us, "say much of beasts, birds, and fishes, discuss how many hairs there are on the lion's head and feathers in the hawk's tail, and how many coils the polypus winds about a wrecked ship; they expatiate upon the generation of the elephant and its biennial offspring, as well as upon the docility and intelligence of the animal and its resemblance to human-kind. They tell how the phœnix lives two or three centuries, and is then consumed by an aromatic fire, to be born again from its ashes." This characteristic mediæval lore he rejects as false, and sensibly declares that the accounts of such wonders as reach his part of the world relate to matters unfamiliar to those who describe them. Hence, such stories are readily invented and received by reason of the distance from the places where the phenomena are said to occur. "Even if all these things were true," he characteristically urges, "they help in no way toward a happy life, for what does it advantage is to be familiar with the nature of animals, birds, fishes, and reptiles, while we are ignorant of the nature of the race of man to which we belong, and do not know or care whence we come or whither we go?"[32]

The astrologers, so highly esteemed in his day, seemed to him mere charlatans, who were supported by the credulity of those who were madly curious to know what could not be known, and should not be known if it could. Cicero and Augustine had demonstrated the futility of the claims made by the mathematici, as they were long called, and Petrarch ratified their judgment; yet so general was the belief in their powers that astrology was taught in the universities of Italy.[33] Even the hard-headed despot of Milan once deferred a military expedition because an astrological friend of Petrarch's declared the proposed time to be unpropitious. The army had, however, scarcely started, with the approval of the astrologer, before such terrible and prolonged rains set in that only the personal courage and good fortune of the prince prevented a disaster. When Petrarch inquired of his friend how he made so grievous, a miscalculation, the astrologer replied that it was especially difficult to forecast the weather. He received the triumphant retort: "It is easier, then, to know what is going to happen to me alone or to some other individual several years hence, than that which threatens heaven and earth to-day or to-morrow!"[34]

Petrarch's good sense was once or twice tested to the utmost, and yet he refused to give a supernatural explanation even to startling personal experiences, such as still occasionally disturb the precarious adjustment of our generally accepted scheme of the universe. He gives two curious instances of prophetic visions that came true. On one occasion, he had left the bedside of a very dear friend, whose case had been pronounced hopeless by the physicians. Upon his falling into a troubled sleep the sick man appeared to him and announced that he would get the better of his malady if only he were not deserted. There was one already at hand, he said, who might save him. Hereupon Petrarch awoke to find one of the doctors at his door, who had come to comfort him for the loss of his friend. He thereupon compelled the reluctant physician to return to the sick-room: they immediately perceived hopeful signs in the condition of the patient, who was in due time completely restored to health.

The second dream that Petrarch narrates concerned his noble friend, Giacomo of Colonna, who while still a young man had been made Bishop of Lombez, a town not far from Toulouse. Petrarch was, at the time of which we are speaking, at Parma, separated from his friend, as he points out, by no inconsiderable stretch of country.

"Vague rumours of his illness had reached me, so that, swayed alternately by hope and fear, I was eagerly awaiting more definite news. I shudder even now as I recall it all; my eye rests upon the very spot where I saw him in the quiet of the night. He was alone, and crossed the brook that is running before me through my garden. I hastened to meet him, and in my surprise and astonishment I overwhelmed him with questions—whence he came, whither he was going, why he was in such haste, and entirely alone? He made no reply to my queries, but, smiling as was his wont when he spoke, he said: 'Do you remember how you were troubled by the storms of the Pyrenees, when you once spent some time with me beyond the Garonne?[35] I am worn out by them now, and have left them never to return. I go to Rome.' While saying this he had swiftly reached the limits of the enclosure. I pressed him to permit me to accompany him, but twice he gently repulsed me with a wave of the hand, and finally, with a strange change in his face and voice, said: 'Desist, I do not wish your companionship now.' Then I fixed my eyes upon him and recognised the bloodless pallor of death. Overcome by fright and sorrow, I cried out, so that, as I awoke at that very moment, I heard the last echoes of my own scream. I marked the day and told the whole story to the friends who were within reach and wrote about it to those absent. Twenty-five days later the announcement of his death reached me. Upon comparing the dates, I discovered that he