Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/249

Rh faith that in the long run would inevitably result from such sympathy. Both in his strength and in his weakness he was eminently fitted to be the founder, or furtherer, of Humanism.

Petrarch's love of the classics began in admiration of their more superficial charm, which is just what would be expected of the youth who wrote the graceful lyrics of the Canzoniere. But this feeling developed soon into a perception of their deeper beauty and significance. At the time when he first becomes thoroughly known to us as a student of antiquity we are amazed at the justness of his appreciation. Only occasionally does he betray the fact that he is a man of the Middle Ages, hampered by a narrow intellectual inheritance; and that his work is that of a pioneer, in a country which is absolutely unexplored.

Of these rare limitations we detect the fewest traces in his criticism of Cicero. This may be accounted for largely on the ground that Cicero and Petrarch were men of the same temperament and cast of mind. They were both typical men of letters. The man of letters is intellectually alert; sensitive to impressions and able to report them; hospitable to all the ideas of his time; sometimes