period he determined to bequeath a portion of his rich library to Venice for the use of students and the general public, and as an example to other men. He was highly esteemed by the Venetians, and his house was the meeting-place of the wise and the powerful. Boccaccio was his guest here for many months; they talked and walked, and they sailed the canals and the lagoons together in perfect sympathy; and there still exists a letter of Petrarch to Boccaccio, asking the latter poet to come again, and to stay longer next time.
Signor N. Barozzi, in a volume entitled Petrarca e Venezia, published in Venice in 1874, reprints, from the old plan of the city, now in the Archæological Museum, a rough sketch of Petrarch’s house during his residence here between 1362 and 1368; and he seems to establish the fact that it was hired by the poet, not presented to him by the city, as is generally believed. It was then called the Palazzo del Molin, and it stood near to the Ponte del Sepolcro on the Riva degli Schiavoni, a broad promenade and wharf a short distance east of the Ducal Palace. This house, according to Petrarch himself, was humble enough; it had two towers, a style of architecture not uncommon in those days; and according to Signor Barozzi it was, later, a monastery, and at the present time is occupied as a barrack. If Signor Barozzi and the plan are correct, it is not the house marked by the tablet, and pointed out in the guide-books as Petrarch’s, but the building on the corner of the little Calle del Dose, and some forty or fifty paces to the east of the generally accepted spot.
The two original towers of the Petrarch house disappeared long ago; the entire front is new and ugly, and the rear portions, although they are old and picturesque, do not date back to the Fourteenth Century. There is, probably, no part of the mansion left, as Petrarch knew and loved it, except, perhaps, the pavement of the court-yard. Even the old marble well is not as old as the days of the great poet. The interior of the establishment is not now seen of the public, except by permission of the military authorities, but it is one of the most interesting of the Landmarks of Venice, because of its association with the two immortal men who once adorned it.
Petrarch from his tower had a perfect view of the city and of the Adriatic, watching as he did the navies of the then known world as they entered and left the harbor, and looking out over the sea and down upon the crowds of busy men. His life here was, no doubt, a happy one; as must be the life of any man who brings to Venice some knowledge of its history, some idea of its art, some fondness for its traditions, and letters of introduction to some of its men of mind in all professions.
Signor Tassini says that while Petrarch lived here he often enjoyed the society of his natural daughter, Francesca, who once, in this house, and in the absence of her father, received the sad news of the death, at her home in Pavia, of her infant child; when Boccaccio acted as comforter, and tried in vain to stay her maternal tears.
Mr. Horatio F. Brown and Mr. Howells both quote a letter, written in Latin, by Petrarch to his friend Pietro Bolognese, in which he describes a famous festival held in the Piazza S. Marco to celebrate a victory over the Greeks in Candia. The poet was seated in the place of honor, at the right of the Doge, in the gallery of the Cathedral, and in front of the bronze horses; and he tells of the many youths, decked in purple and gold, ruling with the rein, and urging with the spur, their horses in the then unpaved square, and watched by a throng of spectators so great that a grain of barley could not have fallen to the ground. There is not a horse in all Venice to-day; the youths wear ulsters when it is cold, and very little of anything when it is hot; and every grain of barley which falls to the ground is ravenously devoured by the doves, who alone of all the Venetians wear the purple now. If tradition, for the once, speaks truly, these very doves are the direct descendants of the carrier-pigeons which brought to Admiral Dandolo information from spies in Candia leading to the capture of the island, and which may have received grains of barley from the hand of Petrarch himself. As such do the doves of the present day receive grains of barley from me.
Mr. Brown, in his admirable study of The Venetian Printing Press, says that Aldus is not known, of a certainty, to have lived in the house, or even on the site of the house, No. 2311 Rio Terra Secondo, in the parish of S. Agostino, which is marked with a tablet
THE HOUSE OF PETRARCH