His first assailant was one of Clement’s own physicians, who loaded him with scurrility in a formal letter.  These circumstances brought forth our poet’s “Four Books of Invectives against Physicians,” a work in which he undoubtedly exposes a great deal of contemporary quackery, but which, at the same time, scarcely leaves the physician-hunter on higher ground than his antagonists.

In the last year of his life, Clement VI. wished to attach our poet permanently to his court by making him his secretary, and Petrarch, after much coy refusal, was at last induced, by the solicitations of his friends, to accept the office.  But before he could enter upon it, an objection to his filling it was unexpectedly started.  It was discovered that his style was too lofty to suit the humility of the Roman Church.  The elevation of Petrarch’s style might be obvious, but certainly the humility of the Church was a bright discovery.  Petrarch, according to his own account, so far from promising to bring down his magniloquence to a level with church humility, seized the objection as an excuse for declining the secretaryship.  He compares his joy on this occasion to that of a prisoner finding the gates of his prison thrown open.  He returned to Vaucluse, where he waited impatiently for the autumn, when he meant to return to Italy.  He thus describes, in a letter to his dear Simonides, the manner of life which he there led:—­

“I make war upon my body, which I regard as my enemy.  My eyes, that have made me commit so many follies, are well fixed on a safe object.  They look only on a woman who is withered, dark, and sunburnt.  Her soul, however, is as white as her complexion is black, and she has the air of being so little conscious of her own appearance, that her homeliness may be said to become her.  She passes whole days in the open fields, when the grasshoppers can scarcely endure the sun.  Her tanned hide braves the heats of the dog-star, and, in the evening, she arrives as fresh as if she had just risen from bed.  She does all the work of my house, besides taking care of her husband and children and attending my guests.  She seems occupied with everybody but herself.  At night she sleeps on vine-branches; she eats only black bread and roots, and drinks water and vinegar.  If you were to give her anything more delicate, she would be the worse for it:  such is the force of habit.

“Though I have still two fine suits of clothes, I never wear them.  If you saw me, you would take me for a labourer or a shepherd, though I was once so tasteful in my dress.  The times are changed; the eyes which I wished to please are now shut; and, perhaps, even if they were opened, they would not now have the same empire over me.”