Lat. 'nepos'; but later on, Claudius is called his eme, i.e. uncle.
To which it is not unusual to object, by insisting that it was not Chaucer himself who met Petrarch, but the Clerk who tells the tale. I doubt if this amounts to more than a quibble. There is nothing out of place in Chaucer's reference to an incident in his own life, inasmuch as he was a clerk himself, in the sense of being a student. Otherwise, we have to explain how the poor clerk raised the money to pay for this long journey; how it came to pass that he met Petrarch, and when; and how he acquired a copy of Petrarch's tale.
See E 27, 40.
See E 1147—'Petrark wryteth.' And yet Warton could imagine that Chaucer did not use a copy of Petrarch's version, but only wrote from recollection of what he had heard! If we enquire, how did Chaucer obtain this version, no answer is so likely as the supposition that Petrarch gave it him at parting. It is difficult to see how he could have got it otherwise.
The words 'He is now deed,' in E 29, suggest that Petrarch was still living when Chaucer first wrote the Tale.