er. "My wife has
eloped," says another; "If it has happened to you once, it happened
to Menelaus twice." One poor fellow is in great distress at having
discovered that his wife's son is none of his. "It is hard," says
he, "that I should have had the expense of bringing up one who is
indifferent to me." "You are a man," returns his monitor, quoting the
famous line of Terence; "and nothing that belongs to any other man
ought to be indifferent to you." The physical calamities of life are not
omitted; and there is in particular a disquisition on the advantages of
having the itch, which, if not convincing, is certainly very amusing.

The invectives on an unfortunate physician, or rather upon the medical
science, have more spirit. Petrarch was thoroughly in earnest on this
subject. And the bitterness of his feelings occasionally produces, in
the midst of his classical and scholastic pedantry, a sentence worthy of
the second Philippic. Swift himself might have envied the chapter on the
causes of the paleness of physicians.

Of his Latin works the Epistles are the most generally known and
admired. As compositions they are certainly superior to his essays.
But their excellence is only comparative. From so large a collection of
letters, written by so eminent a man, during so varied and eventful
a life, we should have expected a complete and spirited view of the
literature, the manners, and the politics of the age. A traveller--a
poet--a scholar--a lover--a courtier--a recluse--he might have
perpetuated, in an imperishable record, the form and pressure of the age
and body of the time. Those who read his correspondence, in the hope
of finding such information as this, will be utterly disappointed. It
contains nothing characteristic of the period or of the individual. It
is a series, not of letters, but of themes; and, as it is not generally
known, might be very safely employed at public schools as a magazine of
commonplaces. Whether he write on politics to the Emperor and the
Doge, or send advice and consolation to a private friend, every line is
crowded with examples and quotations, and sounds big with Anaxagoras and
Scipio. Such was the interest excited by the character of Petrarch, and
such the admiration which was felt for his epistolary style, that it was
with difficulty that his letters reached the place of their destination.
The poet describes, with pretended regret and real complacency, the
importunity of the curious, who