studied those writers with intelligent enthusiasm, and that they were to him living persons. Resembling Goethe in his steadfast pursuit of a complete self-culture, Petrarch proclaimed that the classics supply the best, the unique, instrument for that purpose. He enjoyed in Italy an immense popularity and renown; his Latin epic poem, "Africa," though often tame, won scarcely less applause than his Italian lyrics; and his Latin prose-writings were widely read. He was also the first man of great eminence who showed zeal in collecting books, manuscripts, and coins. He did not know Greek; yet, with a sure instinct, he apprehended its significance, and was eager that the knowledge of it should be restored. The age must have been ready for the movement; but it was the powerful and famous personality of Petrarch which gave the initial impulse. His devoted disciple, who died only one year later (in 1375), the gentle and diligent Boccaccio, earliest of Italian Hellenists, propagated and diffused Petrarch's influence; and so, before the close of the fourteenth century, the full tide of the humanistic revival had set in.
Petrarch's ideal of humanism, as a discipline which aims at drawing out all the mental and moral faculties of man, pervades the whole course of the Italian Renaissance. Often, indeed, that ideal was obscured by affectations or puerilities; not seldom it was belied by evil living; but nevertheless it was a real force, which comes out more or less in all the greater and nobler of the humanists. The enthusiasm
