Note 582 — Chapter XVI

Here we see Petrarch's absurd hatred of the vulgar tongue. How a man so intelligent and so far in advance of his age in all else could deceive himself so easily as to believe that Latin in his day could be anything but a tongue for priests to bark in is difficult to understand. Apart from the Liturgy and the Divine Office and a few hymns and religious works maybe, no work of art has been produced in it. Had Petrarch been an ecclesiastic, it might be comprehensible; but he was the first man of the modern world. No doubt he was dreaming of the Empire.