Having disposed thus of one matter which has been troubling me, I come now to a second. You thank me for my solicitude for your health. While you do this from courtesy, and in accordance with conventional usage, you well know that such acknowledgment is quite unnecessary. For who is ever thanked for his interest in himself, or his own affairs? and you, dear friend, are part and parcel of myself.
Although, next to virtue, friendship is the most sacred, the most God-like and divine thing in human intercourse, yet I think that it makes a difference whether one begins by loving or by being loved, and that those friendships should be more carefully fostered where we return love for love than where we simply receive it. I have been overwhelmed in a thousand instances by your kindness and friendly offices, but among them all there is one that I can never forget.
In days gone by, I was hurrying across central Italy in mid-winter; you hastened to greet me, not only with affectionate longings, which are the wings of the soul, but in person, impelled by a wondrous desire to behold one whom you had never yet seen,[27] but whom you were nevertheless resolved to love. You had sent before you a piece of beautiful verse, thus showing me first the aspect of your genius, and then of your person. It was evening, and the light was fading, when, returning from my long exile,[28] I found myself at last within my native walls. You welcomed me with a courtesy and respect greater than I merited, recalling the poetic meeting of Anchises and the King of Arcadia, who, "in the ardour of youth, longed to speak with the hero and to press his hand."[29] Although I did not, like him, stand "above all others," but rather beneath, your zeal was none the less ardent. You introduced me, not within the walls of Pheneus, but into the sacred penetralia of your friendship. Nor did I present you with "a superb quiver and arrows of Lycia," but rather with my sincere and unchangeable affection. While acknowledging my inferiority in many respects, I will never willingly concede it in this, either to Nisus, or to Pythias, or to Lælius. Farewell.
[1] Fam., xiii., 7. This is the only letter that is preserved of Petrarch to this person.
[2] Hæc, here used, we may safely infer, means verses.
[3] I.e., a soul able to free itself from the influence of the mere word and perceive the hidden allegorical meaning which to Petrarch was the essence of real poetry. See below, p. [233] sqq.
[4] This name is perhaps incorrect, owing to some error in the MSS. upon which Fracassetti based his edition.
[5] About a page is omitted here relating to some lucrative or honourable appointment which Petrarch's friends were anxious to obtain for him.
[6] I.e. at Vaucluse.