This accusation naturally irritates the scholar, who has from boyhood scorned anthologies and favourite quotations. He cannot deny, however, that he does sometimes store up for the benefit of his friends and associates choice passages which he meets with. Augustine proceeds:
Not content with this daily occupation, which, although it took a great deal of time, promised you only a reputation among your contemporaries, you conceived of a fame which should reach posterity. Hence you undertook an historical work, covering the period from King Romulus to the Emperor Titus, a tremendous task requiring infinite patience and labour. Then, before this was done, infatuated by this craving for fame you set off on the wings of the poet for Africa. Now you diligently devote yourself to the several cantos of your poem by that name, without, however, giving up the other tasks, and so your life is divided into two great streams at least, not to speak of innumerable undercurrents. Prodigal of your most precious and irretrievable time, you write of others and forget yourself. Who knows but death may snatch the weary pen from your hand before either work is done?
The last source of apprehension is by no means new to Francesco.—He cannot bear to think of another laying hand to his Africa, and he confesses that in periods of bitter discouragement he has been on the point of burning the uncompleted manuscript. Augustine naturally recalls to him the melancholy truth that even if, granting the most favourable circumstances, he should succeed in producing a "rare and distinguished work," its fame could not reach far in time or space. Francesco impatiently asks to be spared the old trite reflections of the philosophers. "If you have anything better to urge, pray produce it; all this sounds very fine but I have never found that it helped me. I do not ask to be God and possess eternity and fill heaven and earth. Human glory is enough for me. I do long for that. I am a mortal and I desire only the mortal." To Augustine's horrified deprecation of such doctrine and his condemnation of the rashness of those who recklessly postpone their supreme interests to their last failing years, Francesco sturdily replies:
There is a certain justification for my plan of life. It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, so long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame. So this is the natural order, that among mortals the care of things mortal should come first; to the transitory will then succeed the eternal; from the first to the second is the natural progression.[7]
After this audacious and historically remarkable statement of the Humanists' creed, Francesco humbly asks if Augustine would have him forsake his studies altogether and lead an inglorious existence, or shall he pursue some middle course. His Confessor replies that we do not live inglorious lives although we follow, not fame but virtue; for true fame is but the shadow of virtue. "Throw off the burden of your proposed Roman History," Augustine exclaims, "lay aside your Africa, which cannot increase the fame of your Scipio or yourself.... Turn your thoughts upon Death! Let everything about you recall your pending fate. The heavens, the earth, and the sea all change; what chance that man, the weakest of creatures, should hold his own? Let the setting sun and the waning moon teach their lesson of mortality. Contemplate the graves of your friends. Hoc iter est in patriam."
Petrarch does not deny that this is wholesome advice, but he firmly refuses to give up his literary tasks, which he cannot with equanimity leave half done. He promises sedulously to die unto himself, and will hasten to complete his books in order to devote himself exclusively to religious contemplation. It will be seen that he found little to urge against Augustine's views, but that he nevertheless refused to follow his advice, except so far as he might do so without interfering with what he rightly considered his life's work.
So, without ability to defend completely the modern belief that earnest toil is presumably a far more rational preparation for death, than is a paralysing contemplation of its horrors, Petrarch still worked bravely on until the pen dropped from his hand. There is something noble and pathetic in this sturdy, unflagging industry in the face of the discomforting suggestions of monasticism. His life transcended and belied those ideals of his age from which in his less exuberant moments he was unable entirely to free himself.
[1] The following analysis of the Confessions was published in the Romanic Review, vol. i., Nos. 3-4, 1910. Since its appearance a complete English version of the little work has appeared, Petrarch's Secret, translated by William H. Draper, London, 1911.
[2] The classical term aegritudo is scarcely more to the point than the mediæval expression. It is often used by Cicero in one of his Tusculan Disputations, but it is not the bitterness of spirit with which Petrarch suffered. Seneca's little work upon Peace of Mind may, as Voigt has suggested, have influenced this portion of the Confessions. But while Petrarch resembled Seneca in more than one respect and was drawn to his writings by an obvious spiritual affinity, his personal experiences were far too genuine and spontaneous to require the example of another to bring them to light. No one can compare the Roman's treatise with the Confessions without quickly absolving Petrarch from any attempt consciously or unconsciously to imitate Seneca. Our conception of the nature of the poet's mental disquiet must be sought in the dialogue itself.