'Whether I am
being shaved or having my hair cut,' he wrote, 'and whether I am riding
or dining, I either read or get some one to read to me.' Some of his
favourite volumes are described in terms of delightful affection. He
tells us how Homer and Plato sat side by side on the shelf,--the prince
of poets by the prince of philosophers. He only knew the rudiments of
Greek, and was forced to read the Iliad in the Latin version. 'But I
glory,' he said, 'in the sight of my illustrious guests, and have at
least the pleasure of seeing the Greeks in their national costume.'
'Homer,' he adds, 'is dumb, or I am deaf; I am delighted with his looks;
and as often as I embrace the silent volume I cry, "Oh illustrious bard,
how gladly would I listen to thy song, if only I had not lost my hearing,
through the death of one friend and the lamented absence of another!"'
In his treatise on Fortune, Petrarch has left us a study on
book-collecting in the form of a dialogue between his natural genius and
his critical reason. He argues, as it were, in his own person against the
imaginary opponent. A paraphrase will show the nature and the result of
the contest.
'_Petrarch._ I have indeed a great quantity of books.
_Critic._ That gives me an excellent instance. Some men amass books for
self-instruction and others from vanity. Some decorate their rooms with
the furniture that was intended to be an ornament of the soul, as if it
were like the bronzes and statues of which we were speaking.
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