nte was expelled from Florence, a notary, by
name Petracco, was involved in a similar banishment. Retired to Arezzo,
he there became the father of Francis Petrarch. This great man shared of
course, during his early years, in the adverse fortune of his family,
which he was invincibly reluctant to restore, according to his father's
wish, by the profession of jurisprudence. The strong bias of nature
determined him to polite letters and poetry. These are seldom the
fountains of wealth; yet they would perhaps have been such to Petrarch,
if his temper could have borne the sacrifice of liberty for any worldly
acquisitions. At the city of Avignon, where his parents had latterly
resided, his graceful appearance and the reputation of his talents
attracted one of the Colonna family, then bishop of Lombes in Gascony.
In him, and in other members of that great house, never so illustrious
as in the fourteenth century, he experienced the union of patronage and
friendship. This, however, was not confined to the Colonnas. Unlike
Dante, no poet was ever so liberally and sincerely encouraged by the
great; nor did any perhaps ever carry to that perilous intercourse a
spirit more irritably independent, or more free from interested
adulation. He praised his friends lavishly because he loved them
ardently; but his temper was easily susceptible of offence, and there
must have been much to tolerate in that restlessness and jealousy of
reputation which is perhaps the inevitable failing of a poet.[883] But
every thing was forgiven to a man who was the acknowledged boast of his
age and country. Clement VI. conferred one or two sinecure benefices
upon Petrarch, and would probably have raised him to a bishopric if he
had chosen to adopt the ecclesiastical profession. But he never took
orders, the clerical tonsure being a sufficient qualification for
holding canonries. The same pope even afforded him the post of
apostolical secretary, and this was repeated by Innocent VI. I know not
whether we should ascribe to magnanimity or to a politic motive the
behaviour of Clement VI. towards Petrarch, who had pursued a course as
vexatious as possible to the Holy See. For not only he made the
residence of the supreme pontiffs at Avignon, and the vices of their
court, the topic of invectives, too well founded to be despised, but he
had ostentatiously put himself forward as the supporter of Nicola di
Rienzi in a project which could evidently have no other aim than