It cannot be denied that there are some excellent maxims respecting government in this treatise, and that it was a laudable work for the fourteenth century.  But since that period the subject has been so often discussed by minds of the first order, that we should look in vain into Petrarch’s Essay for any truths that have escaped their observation.  Nature offers herself in virgin beauty to the primitive poet.  But abstract truth comes not to the philosopher, till she has been tried by the test of time.

After his return from Venice, Petrarch only languished.  A low fever, that undermined his constitution, left him but short intervals of health, but made no change in his mode of life; he passed the greater part of the day in reading or writing.  It does not appear, however, that he composed any work in the course of the year 1374.  A few letters to Boccaccio are all that can be traced to his pen during that period.  Their date is not marked in them, but they were certainly written shortly before his death.  None of them possess any particular interest, excepting that always in which he mentions the Decameron.

It seems at first sight not a little astonishing that Petrarch, who had been on terms of the strictest friendship with Boccaccio for twenty-four years, should never till now have read his best work.  Why did not Boccaccio send him his Decameron long before?  The solution of this question must be made by ascribing the circumstance to the author’s sensitive respect for the austerely moral character of our poet.

It is not known by what accident the Decameron fell into Petrarch’s hands, during the heat of the war between Venice and Padua.  Even then his occupations did not permit him to peruse it thoroughly; he only slightly ran through it, after which he says in his letter to Boccaccio, “I have not read your book with sufficient attention to pronounce an opinion upon it; but it has given me great pleasure.  That which is too free in the work is sufficiently excusable for the age at which you wrote it, for its elegant language, for the levity of the subject, for the class of readers to whom it is suited.  Besides, in the midst of much gay and playful matter, several grave and pious thoughts are to be found.  Like the rest of the world, I have been particularly struck by the beginning and the end.  The description which you give of the state of our country during the plague, appeared to me most true and most pathetic.  The story which forms the conclusion made so vivid an impression on me, that I wished to get it by heart, in order to repeat it to some of my friends.”

Petrarch, perceiving that this touching story of Griseldis made an impression on all the world, had an idea of translating it into Latin, for those who knew not the vulgar tongue.  The following anecdote respecting it is told by Petrarch himself:—­“One of his friends, a man of knowledge and intellect, undertook to read it to a company; but he had hardly got into the midst of it, when his tears would not permit him to continue.  Again he tried to resume the reading, but with no better success.”