Petrarch himself composed many Latin works and did much to
spread a knowledge of Latin authors. He traveled widely in Italy, France, and
other countries, searching everywhere for ancient manuscripts. When he found in
one place two lost orations of Cicero and in another place a collection of
Cicero's letters, he was transported with delight. He kept copyists in his
house, at times as many as four, busily making transcripts of the manuscripts
that he had discovered or borrowed. Petrarch knew almost no Greek. His copy of
Homer, it is said, he often kissed, though he could not read it.
BOCCACCIO, 1313-1375 A.D.
Petrarch's friend and disciple, Boccaccio, was the first
to bring to Italy manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Having learned some Greek, he wrote out a translation of those epic poems. But
Boccaccio's fame to- day rests on the Decameron. It is a collection of
one hundred stories written in Italian. They are supposed to be told by a merry
company of men and women, who, during a plague at Florence, have retired to a
villa in the country. The Decameron is the first important work in
Italian prose. Many English writers, notably Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales
have gone to it for ideas and plots. The modern short story may be said to
date from Boccaccio.
