But not even the love of books and of men took up all the activities of this rich nature. He was also a keen traveller and among the first to write of natural scenery in the modern spirit. He had that in him which, in spite of his love for reading and writing, sent him forth into other lands and made him eager to see men and cities. Yet the love of the country in him prevailed over the love of cities. His many references to his life at Vaucluse, though to readers of to-day they may seem sometimes affected, yet show only a superficial affectation, a mere mode, which does not seriously lessen the impression of his simple taste and his genuine delight in his garden and his fishing, and his talk with the charming old farmer-man and that sun-burnt wife for whom he had such an unbounded respect.
In the two recent lives of Petrarch in English a reader may make closer acquaintance with this side of his character, and will find much that falls in with modern feeling as to simplicity of living and the joys of escaping from "the man-stifled town." But what is still a desideratum is a good English translation of his Letters to his friends, which will add many glimpses of his daily interests and thoughts, and fill up the picture of his interior life as it is disclosed to us in the Dialogues here presented.
What the Secretum gives us is the picture of Petrarch as he was in the crisis of his middle years. It was written in or about the year 1342 when he was thirty-eight, and in these Dialogues we find him looking back over his youth and early life—the sap and vigour of his mind as strong as ever, the recollection of many sensations green and still powerful—but finding that the sheer march of time and experience of manhood are forcing him now to see things with more mature vision. Five years later he will be seen suddenly kindled into surprising excitement in that strange Rienzi episode, but in one of his letters to that unhappy politician there is a sentence which might have been penned by Bishop Butler, and has in it the accent of grave experience:[2] "Ibunt res quâ sempiterna lex statuit: mutare ista non possum, fugere possum" (Things will go as the law eternal has decided: to alter their course is out of our power; what we can do is to get out of their way).
The interest of the Secretum is heightened by remembering the time of life in which it was composed.[3] Some will find most pleasure in reading what men have written De Senectute, and others prefer the charm that belongs to youth; but is there not much to be said for the interest of what men write from that high tableland that lies between the two, in the full strength of their mind when they have lived long enough to know what is hidden from the eyes of youth and not long enough to be wearied and broken with the greatness of the way? Such is the tone that seems to pervade the Dialogues between S. Augustine and Petrarch. In the preface he looks forward to cherishing the little book himself in future years, like some flower that keeps alive remembrance of past days and yet is not cherished for memory only, but to guard the resolution which has been taken to go forward and not back, and, as his French translator suggests, "Is it to be wondered at that these pages, written with such abandon, in which he has laid bare his whole soul, should have been his own favourite work? It was the book he kept at his bedside, his faithful counsellor and friend, and to which he turned ever and again with pleasure in the hours of remembering the time past."
It is not necessary to tell over again the story of Petrarch's lifelong devotion to the study of S. Augustine's Confessions, or to dwell on the obvious reasons for that devotion. Every man loves the book which tells the history of conflicts like his own, and which has helped to give him courage in his warfare and its sorrows and joys.
"That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more;"
sings the poet, but if one reads the experience of those who have suffered and contended and conquered, and is sure that their load was as heavy as his own, then there is a spirit which is breathed over from one life to another, and which even though it tells us how great is the burden of sorrow in the world, yet also tells us that a man is not alone, but that there are companions in patience who a little strengthen each other and give the sense of fellowship from age to age, donec aspiret dies et inclinentur umbrae.
Many of the letters of Petrarch's later years show how wistfully he waited for that day. But they also show how gallant a heart he kept, and how faithful to those friends that remained, including the one so lovable and generous and true, Giovanni Boccaccio, who survived him little more than a year.
Petrarch passed the end of his life in a modest house which he built in one of the loveliest parts of Italy, that to English readers will be for ever dear because of the haunting music that Shelley wove around its name.
It was in the Euganæan Hills at Arqua where Petrarch chose to wait for the dawn, and, till it came, to go on working among the books he loved as his own soul.