[7] Fam., xxi., 11. The events here narrated probably occurred in 1359.
[8] Petrarch had just finished one letter to Morando, in which he had told him of a wound received on the heel from a great copy of Cicero's works, which had fallen down and struck him.
[9] Bergamo.
[10] Namely, she-goat.
[11] ... sed noscenda aliis dicta sint. Petrarch always wished his letters to be complete even at the risk of repetition. We have here a frank confession that he was not writing for the benefit of the friend alone to whom the letter was addressed. Fracassetti has perversely translated this passage, odi adesso quel che ancora non sai.
[12] A MS. of the Divine Comedy in the Vatican has, it would appear, been at last satisfactorily proven to be the very one which Boccaccio sent. See Pakscher's scholarly paper in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, vol. x., p. 226 sqq. De Nolhac has reached the same conclusion; cf. La Bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini, p. 304.
[13] The little poem closes with the lines:
"Hunc oro, mi care nimis spesque unica nostrûm,
. . . . . . . .
Concivem doctumque satis pariterque poetam
Suscipe, junge tuis, lauda, cole, perlege. Nam si
Feceris hoc, magnis, et te decorabis et illum
Laudibus, O nostræ eximium decus urbis et orbis."
Corazzini, Le Lettere di Boccaccio, p. 54. Also in Fracassetti's Let. delle Cos. Fam., iv., pp. 399, 400.
[14] "Rerum Memorandum," Opera, p. 427. The misprints in the Basle editions give the anecdotes an ill-natured turn which Petrarch did not intend. The opening of the passage should read: Dante Algherius et ipse concivus nuper meus, vir vulgari eloquio clarissimus fuit sed moribus parumper contumacior [the Basle editions have parum per contumaciam] et oratione liberior quam delicatis et fastidiosis ætatis nostræ principum auribus atque oculis acceptum fuit, etc. See Hortis, Studi sulle Opere Latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879, p. 303.