's father had belonged to the same political party as Dante. He
too had been exiled and thus it happened that Petrarca (or Petrarch, as
we call him) was born away from Florence. At the age of fifteen he was
sent to Montpellier in France that he might become a lawyer like his
father. But the boy did not want to be a jurist. He hated the law. He
wanted to be a scholar and a poet--and because he wanted to be a scholar
and a poet beyond everything else, he became one, as people of a
strong will are apt to do. He made long voyages, copying manuscripts in
Flanders and in the cloisters along the Rhine and in Paris and Liege
and finally in Rome. Then he went to live in a lonely valley of the wild
mountains of Vaucluse, and there he studied and wrote and soon he
had become so famous for his verse and for his learning that both the
University of Paris and the king of Naples invited him to come and teach
their students and subjects. On the way to his new job, he was obliged
to pass through Rome. The people had heard of his fame as an editor
of half-forgotten Roman authors. They decided to honour him and in the
ancient forum of the Imperial City, Petrarch was crowned with the laurel
wreath of the Poet.

From that moment on, his life was an endless career of honour and
appreciation. He wrote the things which people wanted most to hear. They
were tired of theological disputations. Poor Dante could wander through
hell as much as he wanted. But Petrarch wrote of love and of nature and
the sun and never mentioned those gloomy things which seemed to have
been the stock in trade of the last generation. And when Petrarch came
to a city, all the people flocked out to meet him and he was received
like a conquering hero. If he happened to bring his young friend
Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were
both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything
once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find
still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the
other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were!
Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing
a dirty coat just because some day or other you were going to die. Life
was good. People were meant to be happy. You desired proof of this? Very
well. Take a spade and dig into the soil. What did you find? Beautiful
old statues. Beautiful old vases. Ruins of ancient buildings.