Such an employment scarcely suited one, who, for the sake of freedom, had declined the highest honours of the catholic church. Petrarch testified great gratitude for the restitution of his property, but passed over their offered professorship in silence. Instead of repairing, as he had been invited, to Florence, he set out to revisit Avignon and Vaucluse. "I had resolved," he writes, "to return here no more; but my desires overcame my resolution, and, in justification of my inconstancy, I have nothing to allege but the necessity I felt for solitude. In my own country I am too well known, too much courted, too greatly praised. I am sick of adulation; and that place becomes dear to me, where I can live to myself alone, abstracted from the crowd, unannoyed by the voice of fame. Habit, which is a second nature, has rendered Vaucluse my true country." His son accompanied him on this occasion. The boy was now fourteen years of age: he was quiet and docile; but invincibly repugnant to learning, to the ne slight mortification of his father, who vainly tried, by reprehension, raillery, and sarcasm, to awaken emulation in his mind.
When Petrarch arrived at Avignon, Clement VI, was very ill, and expected to die. He asked the poet's opinion concerning his disorder; and Petrarch wrote him a letter to give him his advice with regard to the choice of a physician, entreating him to adhere to one, as affording a better prospect, where all was chance, of having his malady understood. The learned body of medical men was highly offended by this letter: they attacked the writer with acrimony; and Petrarch replied in a style of vituperation, little accordant with his usual mild manner. He was highly esteemed in the papal court, and consulted by the four cardinals, deputed to reform the government of Rome; and was again solicited to accept the place of apostolic secretary, which he again refused. "I am content," he said, in reply to his friend the cardinal Talleirand: "I desire nothing more. My health is good; labour renders me cheerful; I have every kind of book; and I have friends, whom I consider the most precious blessing of life, if they do not seek to deprive me of my liberty."
This letter was written from Vaucluse, Petrarch's heart had opened to a thousand sad and tender emotions, when he returned to the valley which had so frequently heard his laments: his sonnets on his return to Provence breathe the softest spirit of sadness and devoted love. He gladly took refuge in his former home from the vices and turbulence of Avignon. He renewed the wandering lonely life he had lived twelve years before. The old peasant still lived with his aged wife; and the poet amused himself with improvements in his garden, which an inundation of the Sorgue overwhelmed and destroyed.
On the death of Clement VI. he was succeeded by Innocent VI. He was an ignorant man; and, from Petrarch's perpetual study of Virgil (who was reputed to be an adept in the art magic), he fancied that the poet was a magician also. 1352.
Ætat.
48. Petrarch was now most anxious to return to Italy, yet still lingered at Vaucluse. He made an excursion to visit the Carthusian convent, where his brother Gerard had taken the vows. Gerard had acted an admirable and heroic part during the visitation of the plague, and survived the dangers to which he fearlessly exposed himself. Petrarch was received in his monastery with respect and affection; and, in compliance with the request of the monks, wrote his treatise "On Solitary Life."
Winter advanced, and he was most anxious to cross the Alps. He visited his old friend, the bishop of Cavaillon, at Cabrières, and was entreated by him to remain "one day more." Petrarch consented with reluctance; and on that very night such storms came on, as impeded his journey for several weeks. 1353.
Ætat.
49. At length he crossed the Alps, and arrived at Milan, on his way southward, not having determined in his own mind in what town he should fix his residence, wavering between Parma, Padua, Verona, and Venice. While in this state of indecision, the hospitable reception and earnest invitation of Giovanni Visconti, lord and bishop of Milan, induced him to remain in that city.
Louis of Baviere, emperor of Germany, had been deposed by pope John XXII., and each succeeding pontiff confirmed the interdict. Clement VI. raised Charles, the son of John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, to the imperial throne, imposing on him, at the same time, rigorous and disgraceful conditions with regard to his rights over Italy, forcing him into an engagement never to pass a single night at Rome, but enter it merely for the ceremony of his coronation. Charles and his father had visited Avignon in the year 1346, to arrange the stipulations.[55] Some time after, Petrarch wrote a long and eloquent letter to the emperor, imploring him to enter Italy, and to deliver it from the disasters that oppressed it. It is singular that two such lovers of their country, as Dante and Petrarch, should both have invited German emperors to take possession of it: but the emperor was then the representative of the sovereigns of the Western empire, and they believed that, crowned and reigning at Rome, that city would again become the capital of the world, and Germany sink into a mere province. For though Petrarch earnestly implores the emperor to enter Italy, various imprecations against the Germans are scattered through his poems.
1354.
Ætat.
50.
Charles did not answer the poet's letter immediately, but he entertained a profound admiration for him; and when he entered Italy, being at Mantua, he sent one of his esquires to Milan, to invite Petrarch to come to him. The poet immediately obeyed, though frost and snow rendered his journey slow and difficult. The emperor received him with the greatest kindness and distinction. Petrarch used the utmost freedom of speech in his exhortations to the emperor to deliver Italy. He made him a present of a collection of antique medals, among which was an admirable one of Augustus, saying to him, "These heroes ought to serve you as examples. The medals are dear to me: I would not part with them to any one but you. I know the lives and acts of the great men whom they represent: this knowledge is not enough for you; you ought to imitate them."
Petrarch's admonitions were vain. After a progress through Italy, and the ceremony of his coronation at Rome; after having made a mere traffic of his power and prerogatives, Charles hastened to repass the Alps, and returned to Germany, as a contemporary historian observes "with a full purse, but shorn of honour."
After the death of the bishop-lord Giovanni Visconti, Petrarch continued to reside at Milan under the protection of his nephew Galeazzo: he was sent by him at one time to Venice to negotiate a peace, and on another to Prague, on an embassy to the emperor Charles. 1355.
Ætat.
51. Afterwards he was sent to Paris to congratulate king John on his return from his imprisonment in England: he was shocked, in travelling through France, to find that it had been laid waste by fire and sword. 1360.
Ætat.
56. The invasion of the English had reduced the whole land to a frightful state of solitude; the fields were desolate, and no house was left standing, except such as were fortified. Paris presented a yet more painful spectacle; grass grew in the deserted streets; the sounds of gaiety and the silence of learning were exchanged for the tumult of soldiery and the fabrication of arms. Petrarch was well received, especially by the dauphin, Charles, who cultivated letters and loved literary men. Here, as in every other court he visited, the poet was solicited to remain; but he found the barbarism of Paris little congenial to his habits, and he hastened back to Italy.