s visit to Liege in a letter
to a friend; 'When we arrived I heard that there was a good supply of
books, so I kept all my party there until I had one oration of Cicero
transcribed by a colleague, and another in my own writing, which I
afterwards published in Italy; but in that fair city of the barbarians it
was very difficult to get any ink, and what I did procure was as yellow
as saffron.'

A few years afterwards he went from Avignon to Paris, and was astonished
at the net-work of filthy lanes in the students' quarter. It was a
paradise of books, all kept at fair prices by the University's decree;
but the traveller declared that, except in 'the world's sink' at Avignon,
he had never seen so dirty a place. At Rome he was dismayed to find that
all the books were the prey of the foreigner. The English and French
merchants were carrying away what had been spared by the Goths and
Vandals. 'Are you not ashamed,' he cried to his Roman friends, 'are you
not ashamed that your avarice should allow these strangers every day to
acquire some remnant of your ancient majesty?'

He used to pore over his manuscripts on the most incongruous occasions,
like Pliny reading his critical notes at the boar-hunt. '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