In the course of the same amusing correspondence with Boccaccio, which our poet maintained at this period, he gives an account of an atheist and blasphemer at Venice, with whom he had a long conversation.  It ended in our poet seizing the infidel by the mantle, and ejecting him from his house with unceremonious celerity.  This conclusion of their dialogue gives us a higher notion of Petrarch’s piety than of his powers of argument.

Petrarch went to spend the autumn of 1365 at Pavia, which city Galeazzo Visconti made his principal abode.  To pass the winter till Easter, our poet returned first to Venice, and then to Padua, according to his custom, to do the duties of his canonry.  It was then that his native Florence, wishing to recall a man who did her so much honour, thought of asking for him from the Pope the canonry of either Florence or Fiesole.  Petrarch fully appreciated the shabby kindness of his countrymen.  A republic that could afford to be lavish in all other expenses, limited their bounty towards him to the begging of a canonicate for him from his Holiness, though Florence had confiscated his father’s property.  But the Pope had other views for him, and had actually appointed him to the canonry of Carpentras, when a false rumour of his death unhappily induced the Pontiff to dispose not only of that living, but of Parma and others which he had resigned to indigent friends.

During the February of 1366 there was great joy in the house of Petrarch, for his daughter, Francesca, the wife of Francesco di Brossano, gave birth to a boy, whom Donato degli Albanzani, a peculiarly-favoured friend of the poet’s, held over the baptismal font, whilst he was christened by the name of Francesco.

Meanwhile, our poet was delighted to hear of reformations in the Church, which signalized the commencement of Urban V.’s pontificate.  After some hesitation, Petrarch ventured to write a strong advice to the Pope to remove the holy seat from Avignon to Rome.  His letter is long, zealous, superstitious, and, as usual, a little pedantic.  The Pope did not need this epistle to spur his intentions as to replacing the holy seat at Rome; but it so happened that he did make the removal no very long time after Petrarch had written to him.

On the 20th of July, 1366, our poet rose, as was his custom, to his matin devotions, and reflected that he was precisely then entering on his sixty-third year.  He wrote to Boccaccio on the subject.  He repeats the belief, at that time generally entertained, that the sixty-third year of a man’s life is its most dangerous crisis.  It was a belief connected with astrology, and a superstitious idea of the influence of numbers; of course, if it retains any attention at present, it must subsist on practical observation:  and I have heard sensible physicians, who had no faith in the influence of the stars, confess that they thought that time of life, commonly called the grand climacteric, a critical period for the human constitution.