Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/261

 was both active and large. He wrote to the emperor and the pope, to kings and their regents, to churchmen of every degree, to scholars in almost all parts of Europe, to men of every profession, every age, every taste; and he wrote always as a Humanist, a lover of the classics, who found in them the quintessence of human wisdom. Men everywhere were ready for broader views, deeper knowledge, keener life, and he, through these letters and through personal contact, stimulated their longing and showed them where they might find that which would satisfy it. The influence that he thus exerted is incalculable. This volume is but an effort to give some comprehension of it.

Of the letters that follow the first four are given for the sake of showing the range and quality of Petrarch's classical scholarship. They are taken, with one exception, from the letters to dead authors, which constitute a large part of the twenty-fourth book of the Familiares. The first is addressed to Cicero.

To Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Your letters I sought for long and diligently; and finally, where I least expected it, I found them. At once I read them, over and over, with the utmost