no performance; who, as the comic poet has said, know everything and yet know nothing. There is a certain wise old Greek proverb that bids everyone stick to the trade that he understands. Farewell.[1]
The Young Humanist of Ravenna.
To Boccaccio.[2]
A year after your departure I had the good fortune to secure the services of a fine, generous, young lad, whom I am sorry you do not know. He knows you well, for he has often seen you, at Venice, in your house,[3] where I am now living, and also at the home of our friend Donato, and on such occasions has observed you very carefully, as is natural at his age. I want you to know him, too, so far as that is possible at such long range, and to see him with the mind's eye, when you read my letters, and so I will tell you a little about him. He was born on the
coast of the Adriatic, at about the time, if I am not- ↑ The old jurist did not take this criticism kindly, but made an angry effort to justify himself; whereupon Petrarch wrote again, exposing his ignorance and childishness more savagely even than in this first epistle.
- ↑ Fam., xxiii., 19.
- ↑ The reader must not be led by this façon de parler to infer that the impecunious Boccaccio owned a mansion in Venice. Petrarch was fond of speaking of his own possessions as belonging to his friends; he refers here to the house furnished him by the Venetian government in exchange for his library. Boccaccio had visited him there, in the summer of 1363, some two years before this letter was written.—For the discussions to which the description of this brilliant youth have given rise the reader is referred to Fracassetti's long note, Let. delle Cose Fam., v., 91 sqq.
