Note 74 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 3)

It is not creditable to the learning of those times to learn, that the libraries of these two great revivers of knowledge were lost to the world soon after their deaths. Boccaccio's, it is true, was destroyed by an accident, being burnt when the convent to which he had left it was consumed by fire. But Petrarch's mouldered away in the palace given by the republic of Venice for its reception and preservation, so that dusty fragments were afterwards found to be all that remained of the venerable parchments which the laureate had expended so much time and labour in collecting.