n the warmest terms, and he afterwards corresponded with them.
We find him returned to Milan, and writing to Simonides on the 20th of
September.

Some days after Petrarch's return from Germany, a courier arrived at
Milan with news of the battle of Poitiers, in which eighty thousand
French were defeated by thirty thousand Englishmen, and in which King
John of France was made prisoner.[M] Petrarch was requested by Galeazzo
Visconti on this occasion to write for him two condoling letters, one to
Charles the Dauphin, and another to the Cardinal of Boulogne. Petrarch
was thunderstruck at the calamity of King John, of whom he had an
exalted idea. "It is a thing," he says, "incredible, unheard-of, and
unexampled in history, that an invincible hero, the greatest king that
ever lived, should have been conquered and made captive by an enemy so
inferior."

On this great event, our poet composed an allegorical eclogue, in which
the King of France, under the name of Pan, and the King of England,
under that of Articus, heartily abuse each other. The city of Avignon is
brought in with the designation of Faustula. England reproaches the Pope
with his partiality for the King of France, to whom he had granted the
tithes of his kingdom, by which means he was enabled to levy an army.
Articus thus apostrophizes Faustula:--

Ah meretrix oblique tuens, ait Articus illi--
Immemorem sponsae cupidus quam mungit adulter!
Haec tua tota fides, sic sic aliena ministras!
Erubuit nihil ausa palam, nisi mollia pacis
Verba, sed assuetis noctem complexibus egit--

Ah, harlot! squinting with lascivious brows
Upon a hapless wife's adulterous spouse,
Is this thy faith, to waste another's wealth.
The guilty fruit of perfidy and stealth!
She durst not be my foe in open light.
But in my foe's embraces spent the night.

Meanwhile, Marquard, Bishop of Augsburg, vicar of the Emperor in Italy,
having put himself at the head of the Lombard league against the
Viscontis, entered their territories with the German troops, and was
committing great devastations. But the brothers of Milan turned out,
beat the Bishop, and took him prisoner. It is evident, from these
hostilities of the Emperor's vicar against the Viscontis, that
Petrarch's embassy to Prague had not had the desired success. The
Emperor, it is true, plainly told him that he had no thoughts of
invading Italy in person. And this was true; but there is no doubt