As soon as his leg was recovered, he made a trip to Bergamo.  There was in that city a jeweller named Enrico Capri, a man of great natural talents, who cherished a passionate admiration for the learned, and above all for Petrarch, whose likeness was pictured or statued in every room of his house.  He had copies made at a great expense of everything that came from his pen.  He implored Petrarch to come and see him at Bergamo.  “If he honours my household gods,” he said, “but for a single day with his presence, I shall be happy all my life, and famous through all futurity.”  Petrarch consented, and on the 13th of October, 1358, the poet was received at Bergamo with transports of joy.  The governor of the country and the chief men of the city wished to lodge him in some palace; but Petrarch adhered to his jeweller, and would not take any other lodging but with his friend.

A short time after his return to Milan, Petrarch had the pleasure of welcoming to his house John Boccaccio, who passed some days with him.  The author of the Decamerone regarded Petrarch as his literary master.  He owed him a still higher obligation, according to his own statement; namely, that of converting his heart, which, he says, had been frivolous and inclined to gallantry, and even to licentiousness, until he received our poet’s advice.  He was about forty-five years old when he went to Milan.  Petrarch made him sensible that it was improper, at his age, to lose his time in courting women; that he ought to employ it more seriously, and turn towards heaven, the devotion which he misplaced on earthly beauties.  This conversation is the subject of one of Boccaccio’s eclogues, entitled, “Philostropos.”  His eclogues are in the style of Petrarch, obscure and enigmatical, and the subjects are muffled up under emblems and Greek names.

After spending some days with Petrarch, that appeared short to them both, Boccaccio, pressed by business, departed about the beginning of April, 1359.  The great novelist soon afterwards sent to Petrarch from Florence a beautiful copy of Dante’s poem, written in his own hand, together with some indifferent Latin verses, in which he bestows the highest praises on the author of the Inferno.  At that time, half the world believed that Petrarch was jealous of Dante’s fame; and the rumour was rendered plausible by the circumstance—­for which he has accounted very rationally—­that he had not a copy of Dante in his library.

In the month of May in this year, 1359, a courier from Bohemia brought Petrarch a letter from the Empress Anne, who had the condescension to write to him with her own hand to inform him that she had given birth to a daughter.  Great was the joy on this occasion, for the Empress had been married five years, but, until now, had been childless.  Petrarch, in his answer, dated the 23rd of the same month, after expressing his sense of the honour which her Imperial Majesty had done him, adds some common-places, and seasons