him that he was able to select the greatest of the Greek poets by listening to the reading of their works although he was unacquainted with their language. A few years afterwards, in 1360, Boccaccio, for twenty years the friend of Petrarch, persuaded a certain Leontius of Salonica, a pupil of Barlaam, to give public lectures upon Homer at Florence. Leontius lodged in the house of Boccaccio, was paid by the republic of Florence, and was probably the first professor of Greek in Italy or any Western country. His appearance was against him, for he was ill clad, had an ugly face, with long unkempt hair and beard, and a sullen manner. But all was excused on account of his knowledge of the Greek language and his delight in its literature. His public reading of Homer pleased the Florentines, and Boccaccio obtained a prose translation of the Iliad and Odyssey made by his _protégé_. At the end of three years the lecturer resigned his post and went to Constantinople. Boccaccio himself not only learned Greek but became a lecturer throughout Italy upon its literature and helped to create an enthusiasm for its study. [Sidenote: Enthusiasm in Italy for study of Greek.] Manuel Chrysoloras, about 1366 or the following year, after he had failed in his mission from the Emperor Manuel to France and England to obtain aid against the Turks, returned to Florence, the centre of the new intellectual movement in Italy, to teach the Greek language and explain its literature. His lectures were followed with delight. Boys and old men were among his audience. The study of Greek became the fashion. One of his pupils, Leonard Aretinus, who subsequently became the secretary of four successive Popes, tells how his soul was inflamed with the love of letters and how on hearing Chrysoloras it was a hard struggle to decide whether he should continue the study of law or be introduced to Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and those poets, philosophers, and orators who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of human science. He gave himself up to Chrysoloras, and so strong, he declares, was his passion for the new studies that the lessons he imbibed during the day were the constant subject of his nightly dreams.[546]