to his hands, but that he acted for the benefit of all Europe. He was intrusted with such missions on account of his reputation; and when he treated with the different princes, it was, as it were, in the character of an arbitrator, whose suffrage everyone was eager to obtain, that he might stand high in the opinion of posterity. The prodigious labours of Petrarch to promote the study of ancient literature are, after all, his noblest title to glory. Such was the view in which they were regarded by the age in which he lived, and such also was his own opinion. His celebrity, notwithstanding, at the present day depends much more on his Italian lyrical poems than on his voluminous Latin compositions. These lyrical pieces, which were imitated from the Provençals, from Cino da Pistoia, and from the other poets who flourished at the commencement of that century, have served, in their turn, as models to all the distinguished poets of the south. The Latin compositions upon which Petrarch rested his fame, and which are twelve or fifteen times as voluminous as his Italian writings, are now only read by the learned. The long poem entitled _Africa_, which he composed on the victories of the elder Scipio, and which was considered, in his own age, as a masterpiece worthy of rivalling the _Æneid_, is very fatiguing to the ear. The style is inflated, and the subject so devoid of interest and so exceedingly dull as absolutely to prevent the perusal of the work. His numerous epistles in verse, instead of giving interest to the historical events to which they allude, acquire it from that circumstance. The imitation of the ancients, and the fidelity of the copy, which in Petrarch’s eyes constituted their chief merit, deprive these productions of every appearance of truth. The invectives against the barbarians who had subjugated Italy are so cold, so bombastic, and so utterly destitute of all colouring suited to the time and place, that we might believe them to have been written by some rhetorician who had never seen Italy; and we might confound them with those which a poetic fury dictated to Petrarch himself, against the Gauls who besieged the capital.