Note 2 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 4)

The reader must not be led by this facon de parler to infer that the impecunious Boccaccio owned a mansion in Venice. Petrarch was fond of speaking of his own possessions as belonging to his friends; he refers here to the house furnished him by the Venetian government in exchange for his library. Boccaccio had visited him there, in the summer of 1363, some two years before this letter was written.—For the discussions to which the description of this brilliant youth have given rise the reader is referred to Fracassetti's long note, Let. delle Cose Fam., v., 91 sqq.