These qualities and contradictions mark Petrarch as a man of letters, not of action. He belonged essentially to the _genus irritabile vatum_, for whom the sphere of thoughts expressed on paper is more vivid than the world of facts. We may trace a corresponding weakness in his chief enthusiasms. Unable to distinguish between the realities of existence and the dreamland of his study, he hailed in Rienzi the restorer of old Rome, while he stigmatised his friends the Colonnesi as barbarian intruders.[36] The Rome he read of in the pages of Livy, seemed to the imagination of this visionary still alive and powerful; nor did he feel the absurdity of addressing the mediæval rabble of the Romans in phrases high-flown for a Gracchus.[37] While he courted the intimacy of the Correggi, and lived as a house-guest with the Visconti, he denounced these princes as tyrants, and appealed to the Emperor to take the reins and bring all Italy beneath his yoke.[38] Herein, it may be urged, Petrarch did but share a delusion common to his age. This is true; but the point to notice is the contradiction between his theories and the habits of his life. He was not a partisan on the Ghibelline side, but a believer in impossible ideals. His patriotism was no less literary than his temperament. The same tendency to measure all things by a student's standard made him exaggerate mere verbal eloquence. Words, according to his view, were power. Cicero held the highest place in his esteem, because his declamation was most copious. Aristotle, in spite of his profound philosophy, was censured for his lack of rhetoric.[39] Throughout the studied works of Petrarch we can trace this vice of a stylistic ideal. Though he never writes without some solid germ of thought, he loves to play with phrases, producing an effect of unreality, and seeming emulous of casuistical adroitness.[40] [Footnote 36: See the _Epistles to Rienzi_, pp. 677, 535.] [Footnote 37: Epistle to the Roman people, beginning 'Apud te invictissime domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.] [Footnote 38: Epistle to Charles IV., _De Pacificandâ Italiâ_, p. 531. This contradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful surprise. See Boccaccio quoted in Baldelli's _Life_, p. 115.] [Footnote 39: _Rerum memorandarum_, lib. ii. p. 415.] [Footnote 40: This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous collection of essays called _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, where opposite views on a wide variety of topics are expressed with great dexterity.]