luse. His letters are full of allusions to his little farm, to the
poplars in the horse-shoe valley, and the river brimming out from the
'monarch of springs.' In these new lawns of Helicon he made a new home
for his books, and tried to forget in their company the tumults that had
driven him from Italy. In 1340 he received offers of a laureate's crown
from Rome, the capital of the world, and from Paris, 'the birth-place of
learning.' 'I start to-day,' he wrote to Colonna, 'to receive my reward
over the graves of those who were the pride of ancient Rome, and in the
very theatre of their exploits.' The Capitol resounded to such cheers
that its walls and 'antique dome' seemed to share in the public joy: the
senator placed a chaplet on his brow, and old Stephen Colonna added a
few words of praise amid the applause of the Roman people.

At Parma, soon afterwards, Petrarch formed another library which he
called his 'second Parnassus.' At Padua he busied himself in the
education of an adopted son, the young John of Ravenna, who lived to be a
celebrated professor, and was nicknamed 'the Trojan Horse,' because he
turned out so many excellent Grecians. In a cottage near Milan the poet
received a visit from Boccaccio, who was at that time inclined to
renounce the world. He offered to give his whole library to Petrarch: he
did afterwards send to his host a _Dante_ of his own copying, which is
now preserved in the Vatican. The approach of a pestilence led Petrarch
to remove his home to Venice: and here he was again visited by Boccaccio,
this time in company with Leontio Pilato, a Calabrian Greek trading in
books between Italy and Constantinople.

Leontio was the translator of Homer, and expounded his poems from the
Chair of Rhetoric at Florence. He was a man of forbidding appearance, and
'more obdurate,' said Petrarch, 'than the rocks that he will encounter in
his voyage': 'fearing that I might catch his bad temper, I let him go,
and gave him a Terence to amuse him on the way, though I do not know what
this melancholy Greek could have in common with that lively African.'
Leontio was killed by lightning on his return voyage; and there was much
anxiety until it could be ascertained that his literary stock-in-trade
had been rescued from the hands of the sailors. It was not till the end
of the century that Chrysoloras renewed the knowledge of the classics:
but we may regard the austere Leontio as the chief precursor of the crowd
of later