Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/283

 name; on the ninth day of October, in the year of this last age of the world the 1360th.

With this, as throwing further light upon Petrarch's limitations, may be placed the letter to his brother, upon the nature of poetry, to which reference was made above in discussing the question of allegory: On the Nature of Poetry.

To his Brother Gherardo.

I judge, from what I know of your religious fervour, that you will feel a sort of repugnance toward the poem which I enclose in this letter, deeming it quite out of harmony with all your professions, and in direct opposition to your whole mode of thinking and living. But you must not be too hasty in your conclusions. What can be more foolish than to pronounce an opinion upon a subject that you have not investigated? The fact is, poetry is very far from being opposed to theology. Does that surprise you? One may almost say that theology actually is poetry, poetry concerning God. To call Christ now a lion, now a lamb, now a worm, what pray is that if not poetical? And you will find thousands of such things in the Scriptures, so very many that I cannot attempt to enumerate them. What indeed are the parables of our Saviour, in the Gospels, but words whose sound is foreign to their