He had another confidant into whose ear to pour the history of his heart. This was the public. In those days, when books were rare, reading was a luxury reserved for a few, and it was chiefly by oral communication that a poet's contemporaries became acquainted with his productions; and there was a class of men, not poets themselves, who chiefly subsisted by repeating the productions of others:--"men," writes Petrarch, "of no genius, but endowed with memory and industry. Unable to compose themselves, they recite the verses of others at the tables of the great, and receive gifts in return. They are chiefly solicitous to please their audience by novelty. How often have they importuned me with entreaties for my yet unfinished poems! Often I refused. Sometimes, moved by the poverty or worth of my applicants, I yield to their desires. The loss is small to me, the gain to them is great. Many have visited me, poor and naked, who, having obtained what they asked, returned, loaded with presents, and dressed in silk, to thank me." These were the booksellers of the middle ages. It was thus that the Italian poetry of Petrarch became known; and he, finding that it was often disfigured in repetition, took pains at last to collect and revise it. He performed the latter task with much care; and afterwards said, that though he saw a thousand faults in his other works, he had brought his Italian poetry to as great a degree of perfection as he was capable of bestowing. He applied himself to Greek at this time under Bernardo Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but educated at Constantinople. He had come to Avignon as ambassador from the Greek emperor Andronicus, for the purpose of reconciling the Greek and Roman churches. They read several of the Dialogues of Plato together. The hook entitled "The Secret of Francesco Petrarca" was written at this period. This work is in the form of dialogues with St. Augustin. Petrarch, assisted by the questions and remarks of the saint, examines the state of his mind, laying bare every secret of his soul, its weaknesses and its fears, with the utmost ingenuousness. He relates the struggles of his passion for Laura, and accuses himself of that love of glory which was the spur of so many of his actions. He speaks of the constitutional melancholy of his disposition, which often rendered him gloomy and almost despairing; and he is hid by the saint to seek a remedy for his sorrows, and make atonement for his faults, by dedicating hereafter all his faculties to God.