Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/275

 To Homer.

Long before your letter reached me I had formed an intention of writing to you, and I should really have done it if it had not been for the lack of a common language. I am not so fortunate as to have learned Greek, and the Latin tongue, which you once spoke, by the aid of our writers, you seem of late, through the negligence of their successors, to have quite forgotten. From both avenues of communication, consequently, I have been debarred, and so have kept silence., But now there comes a man who restores you to us, single-handed, and makes you a Latin again.

Your Penelope cannot have waited longer nor