Note 1 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 4)

Fam., xxiv., 3. This epistle was written very soon after Petrarch's discovery, at Verona, of the Letters to Atticus and Quintus and the Correspondence with Brutus, known collectively as the Letters addressed to Atticus. It undoubtedly gives us the impressions derived from the first eager perusal of these.

It will be observed that Petrarch is less at his ease here than in his ordinary correspondence. One feels in all his letters to the great men of the past a certain constraint. He was awe-struck, and his style consequently is a little self-conscious and laboured.