The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch | Page 3

proscribed and wandering father was obliged to

separate himself from his wife and child, in order to have the means of
supporting them.
As the pretext for banishing Petracco was purely personal, Eletta, his
wife, was not included in the sentence. She removed to a small property
of her husband's, at Ancisa, fourteen miles from Florence, and took the
little poet along with her, in the seventh month of his age. In their
passage thither, both mother and child, together with their guide, had a
narrow escape from being drowned in the Arno. Eletta entrusted her
precious charge to a robust peasant, who, for fear of hurting the child,
wrapt it in a swaddling cloth, and suspended it over his shoulder, in the
same manner as Metabus is described by Virgil, in the eleventh book of
the Æneid, to have carried his daughter Camilla. In passing the river,
the horse of the guide, who carried Petrarch, stumbled, and sank down;
and in their struggles to save him, both his sturdy bearer and the frantic
parent were, like the infant itself, on the point of being drowned.
After Eletta had settled at Ancisa, Petracco often visited her by stealth,
and the pledges of their affection were two other sons, one of whom
died in childhood. The other, called Gherardo, was educated along with
Petrarch. Petrarch remained with his mother at Ancisa for seven years.
The arrival of the Emperor, Henry VII., in Italy, revived the hopes of
the banished Florentines; and Petracco, in order to wait the event, went
to Pisa, whither he brought his wife and Francesco, who was now in his
eighth year. Petracco remained with his family in Pisa for several
months; but tired at last of fallacious hopes, and not daring to trust
himself to the promises of the popular party, who offered to recall him
to Florence, he sought an asylum in Avignon, a place to which many
Italians were allured by the hopes of honours and gain at the papal
residence. In this voyage, Petracco and his family were nearly
shipwrecked off Marseilles.
But the numbers that crowded to Avignon, and its luxurious court,
rendered that city an uncomfortable place for a family in slender
circumstances. Petracco accordingly removed his household, in 1315,
to Carpentras, a small quiet town, where living was cheaper than at
Avignon. There, under the care of his mother, Petrarch imbibed his first

instruction, and was taught by one Convennole da Prato as much
grammar and logic as could be learned at his age, and more than could
be learned by an ordinary disciple from so common-place a preceptor.
This poor master, however, had sufficient intelligence to appreciate the
genius of Petrarch, whom he esteemed and honoured beyond all his
other pupils. On the other hand, his illustrious scholar aided him, in his
old age and poverty, out of his scanty income.
Petrarch used to compare Convennole to a whetstone, which is blunt
itself, but which sharpens others. His old master, however was sharp
enough to overreach him in the matter of borrowing and lending. When
the poet had collected a considerable library, Convennole paid him a
visit, and, pretending to be engaged in something that required him to
consult Cicero, borrowed a copy of one of the works of that orator,
which was particularly valuable. He made excuses, from time to time,
for not returning it; but Petrarch, at last, had too good reason to suspect
that the old grammarian had pawned it. The poet would willingly have
paid for redeeming it, but Convennole was so much ashamed, that he
would not tell to whom it was pawned; and the precious manuscript
was lost.
Petracco contracted an intimacy with Settimo, a Genoese, who was like
himself, an exile for his political principles, and who fixed his abode at
Avignon with his wife and his boy, Guido Settimo, who was about the
same age with Petrarch. The two youths formed a friendship, which
subsisted between them for life.
Petrarch manifested signs of extraordinary sensibility to the charms of
nature in his childhood, both when he was at Carpentras and at
Avignon. One day, when he was at the latter residence, a party was
made up, to see the fountain of Vaucluse, a few leagues from Avignon.
The little Francesco had no sooner arrived at the lovely landscape than
he was struck with its beauties, and exclaimed, "Here, now, is a
retirement suited to my taste, and preferable, in my eyes, to the greatest
and most splendid cities."
A genius so fine as that of our poet could not servilely confine itself to
the slow method of school learning, adapted to the intellects of ordinary

boys. Accordingly, while his fellow pupils were still plodding through
the first rudiments of Latin, Petrarch had recourse to the