of thirty galleys and eight large vessels.  Petrarch did not return to Venice till the expedition had sailed.  He passed the summer in the country, having at his house one of his friends, Barthelemi di Pappazuori, Bishop of Christi, whom he had known at Avignon, and who had come purposely to see him.  One day, when they were both at a window which overlooked the sea, they beheld one of the long vessels which the Italians call a galeazza, entering the harbour.  The green branches with which it was decked, the air of joy that appeared among the mariners, the young men crowned with laurel, who, from the prow, saluted the standard of their country—­everything betokened that the galeazza brought good news.  When the vessel came a little nearer, they could perceive the captured colours of their enemies suspended from the poop, and no doubt could be entertained that a great victory had been won.  The moment that the sentinel on the tower had made the signal of a vessel entering the harbour, the people flocked thither in crowds, and their joy was even beyond expectation when they learned that the rebellion had been totally crushed, and the island reduced to obedience.  The most magnificent festivals were given at Venice on this occasion.

Shortly after these Venetian fetes, we find our poet writing a long letter to Boccaccio, in which he gives a curious and interesting description of the Jongleurs of Italy.  He speaks of them in a very different manner from those pictures that have come down to us of the Provencal Troubadours.  The latter were at once poets and musicians, who frequented the courts and castles of great lords, and sang their praises.  Their strains, too, were sometimes satirical.  They amused themselves with different subjects, and wedded their verses to the sound of the harp and other instruments.  They were called Troubadours from the word trobar, “to invent.”  They were original poets, of the true minstrel breed, similar to those whom Bishop Percy ascribes to England in the olden time, but about the reality of whom, as a professional body, Ritson has shown some cause to doubt.  Of the Italian Jongleurs, Petrarch gives us a humble notion.  “They are a class,” he says, “who have little wit, but a great deal of memory, and still more impudence.  Having nothing of their own to recite, they snatch at what they can get from others, and go about to the courts of princes to declaim verses, in the vulgar tongue, which they have got by heart.  At those courts they insinuate themselves into the favour of the great, and get subsistence and presents.  They seek their means of livelihood, that is, the verses they recite, among the best authors, from whom they obtain, by dint of solicitation, and even by bribes of money, compositions for their rehearsal.  I have often repelled their importunities, but sometimes, touched by their entreaties, I have spent hours in composing productions for them.  I have seen them leave me in rags and poverty, and return, some time afterwards, clothed in silks, and with purses well furnished, to thank me for having relieved them.”