Note 5 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON (continued 5)

A metaphor of which Petrarch is fond. Usually his employment of it can be traced directly to Cicero and Quintilian, but now and then it occurs in a passage that seems to tell of his own keen delight in the sensuous side of language; as in Fam., viii., 7, where he says to 'Socrates': 'Ubi ... dulciter intermicantes colores rhetoricos quærebamus, nil nisi dolentis interjectiones ... aspicimus.' This quotation, and the entire letter above, concerning the young Humanist, are but two among very many indications, scattered through the whole correspondence, that Petrarch had thought long and carefully about literary art, and had formulated to himself all of its principles, down to the very least. His judgment and feeling concerning literature were unerring, except when he was led astray by his allegorising tendency and by a mediæval fondness for senseless plays upon words. Yet outside of his own art he seems to have been decidedly crude æsthetically, as has been the case with many another great man of letters, before and since.