To make a long story short, Petrarch ignored his petition. This, however, did not stop Pilatus. He embarked for Italy, but a storm wrecked the ship in which he sailed in the Adriatic, and though he was not drowned he was struck and killed by lightning. Petrarch wonders if amid his "wretched baggage, which, thanks to the honesty of the sailors, is in safety, I shall find the Euripides, Sophocles, and other manuscripts which he had promised to procure for me."[478] The two friends mourned him sincerely, forgetting their disgust in remembering that Pilatus had known Greek, and finding touching words to deplore the tragic death of the first translator of Homer.
TITLE OF THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF THE "DECAMERON." (VALLADOLID, 1539)
(By the courtesy of Messrs. J. & J. Leighton.)
As for the translation he had made, Petrarch did not see it for some years. The first time he asks for it is in a letter of March 1, 1364.[479] There he asks for a fragment of the Odyssey, "partem illam Odysseæ qua Ulyxes it ad inferos et locorum quæ in vestibulo Erebi sunt descriptionem ab Homero factam ... quam primum potes ... utcumque tuis digitis exaratam." Later he asks for the whole: "In futurum autem, si me amas, vide obsecro an tuo studio, mea impensa fieri possit ut Homerus integer bibliothecam hanc ubi pridem graecus habitat, tandem latinos accedat." These words are very clear. Petrarch says he will pay the copyist himself. So that, as Hortis asserts, the first version of Homer was made at the suggestion of Petrarch by Pilatus at the expense of Boccaccio.
In the letter of December 14, 1365,[480] Petrarch thanks Boccaccio for sending him the Iliad and a part of the Odyssey; but that part did not contain the details he wanted concerning the descent of Ulysses into Hades and his voyage along the Italian shores. Even this incomplete copy, though sent off in 1365 by Boccaccio, was a long time in reaching him. On January 27, 1366, he had not yet received it.[481] But at last it arrived, and Petrarch wrote to thank Boccaccio for it.[482] This letter, however, is not dated, and its contents do not help us to decide exactly when it was written. At any rate, it was after January, 1366, that Petrarch received the precious work. He promised to return this MS. to Boccaccio when he had had it copied; but he seems to have found it difficult to get a capable person to do this; and when he had found him we see him travelling about with him, that the work might be done under his constant supervision.[483]
It is this MS., which M. de Nohlac discusses and describes, that is now in Paris (Bib. Nat., 7880, 1). In it we are able to judge of the extent of Pilatus's knowledge. That he knew Greek seems incontrovertible, but that he knew the Homeric idiom very imperfectly is not less certain; he seems too to have had a poor knowledge of Latin. His translation is full of obscurity, platitude, and mistranslations—in fact, crammed with all the errors of a schoolboy: when he does not know a word, and has to confess it, he writes the Greek word in Latin characters; what we see in fact is not a faithful but a blind translation. And it was for this that Petrarch had waited so patiently! "Penelope," he says, "had not more ardently longed for Ulysses."[484] He studied it with passion, often deceived, no doubt, but never discouraged. The notes with which he covered page after page show us the growing feebleness of his hand, but never of his spirit. He died while he was annotating the Odyssey.
Boccaccio, on the other hand, with a charming and naive sincerity, owns that he did not understand much, but adds that the little he did understand seemed to him beautiful. He was very proud of his victory, and rightly; for by its means the Renaissance was able to give Homer his rightful place in its culture.