THE following letters have been selected with a view to illustrating Petrarch's attitude toward the Italian language and literature, his estimate of the other writers of his time, especially Dante and Boccaccio, and, in general, his literary ideals, and habits of work. An effort has been made to secure some continuity by the arrangement of the matter and the accompanying explanations, but any strictly logical presentation is precluded by the miscellaneous contents of the letters themselves. The reader is left, in most cases, to make his own deductions from Petrarch's words, but a brief excursus is added here and there, with the hope of emphasising some of the more important points.
The first two letters would indicate that there was a wide-spread interest in literature during the fourteenth century, and that Petrarch was looked upon as the highest tribunal before which the aspirant could lay his work. Few of his letters are more instructive or are written
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