The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch | Page 5

in providing for his family, he was prevented by
the scantiness of his fortune, and the cares of his situation, from rising
to that eminence which he might have otherwise attained. But his
admiration of Cicero, in an age when that author was universally
neglected, was a proof of his superior mind.
Petrarch quitted Bologna upon the death of his father, and returned to
Avignon, with his brother Gherardo, to collect the shattered remains of
their father's property. Upon their arrival, they found their domestic
affairs in a state of great disorder, as the executors of Petracco's will
had betrayed the trust reposed in them, and had seized most of the
effects of which they could dispose. Under these circumstances,
Petrarch was most anxious for a MS. of Cicero, which his father had
highly prized. "The guardians," he writes, "eager to appropriate what
they esteemed the more valuable effects, had fortunately left this MS.
as a thing of no value." Thus he owed to their ignorance this treatise,
which he considered the richest portion of the inheritance left him by
his father.
But, that inheritance being small, and not sufficient for the maintenance
of the two brothers, they were obliged to think of some profession for
their subsistence; they therefore entered the church; and Avignon was
the place, of all others, where preferment was most easily obtained.
John XXII. had fixed his residence entirely in that city since October,
1316, and had appropriated to himself the nomination to all the vacant
benefices. The pretence for this appropriation was to prevent
simony--in others, not in his Holiness--as the sale of benefices was
carried by him to an enormous height. At every promotion to a
bishopric, he removed other bishops; and, by the meanest impositions,
soon amassed prodigious wealth. Scandalous emoluments, also, which
arose from the sale of indulgences, were enlarged, if not invented,
under his papacy, and every method of acquiring riches was justified

which could contribute to feed his avarice. By these sordid means, he
collected such sums, that, according to Villani, he left behind him, _in
the sacred treasury_, twenty-five millions of florins, a treasure which
Voltaire remarks is hardly credible.
The luxury and corruption which reigned in the Roman court at
Avignon are fully displayed in some letters of Petrarch's, without either
date or address. The partizans of that court, it is true, accuse him of
prejudice and exaggeration. He painted, as they allege, the popes and
cardinals in the gloomiest colouring. His letters contain the blackest
catalogue of crimes that ever disgraced humanity.
Petrarch was twenty-two years of age when he settled at Avignon, a
scene of licentiousness and profligacy. The luxury of the cardinals, and
the pomp and riches of the papal court, were displayed in an
extravagant profusion of feasts and ceremonies, which attracted to
Avignon women of all ranks, among whom intrigue and gallantry were
generally countenanced. Petrarch was by nature of a warm
temperament, with vivid and susceptible passions, and strongly
attached to the fair sex. We must not therefore be surprised if, with
these dispositions, and in such a dissolute city, he was betrayed into
some excesses. But these were the result of his complexion, and not of
deliberate profligacy. He alludes to this subject in his Epistle to
Posterity, with every appearance of truth and candour.
From his own confession, Petrarch seems to have been somewhat vain
of his personal appearance during his youth, a venial foible, from which
neither the handsome nor the homely, nor the wise nor the foolish, are
exempt. It is amusing to find our own Milton betraying this weakness,
in spite of all the surrounding strength of his character. In answering
one of his slanderers, who had called him pale and cadaverous, the
author of Paradise Lost appeals to all who knew him whether his
complexion was not so fresh and blooming as to make him appear ten
years younger than he really was.
Petrarch, when young, was so strikingly handsome, that he was
frequently pointed at and admired as he passed along, for his features
were manly, well-formed, and expressive, and his carriage was graceful

and distinguished. He was sprightly in conversation, and his voice was
uncommonly musical. His complexion was between brown and fair,
and his eyes were bright and animated. His countenance was a faithful
index of his heart.
He endeavoured to temper the warmth of his constitution by the
regularity of his living and the plainness of his diet. He indulged little
in either wine or sleep, and fed chiefly on fruits and vegetables.
In his early days he was nice and neat in his dress, even to a degree of
affectation, which, in later life, he ridiculed when writing to his brother
Gherardo. "Do you remember," he says, "how much care we employed