Note 3 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 4)

In Petrarch's day, as has been hinted above (p. 237), there was no apparatus for the study of Greek. Oral instruction, from Greek or Byzantine scholars, was the only possible means of access to the great writers of the past. Such instruction was very difficult to secure, as Petrarch's repeated efforts and final failure prove. For his own statements concerning this subject see Fam., xviii., 2.