In the summer of 1357, Petrarch, wishing to screen himself from the excessive heat, took up his abode for a time on the banks of the Adda at Garignano, a village three miles distant from Milan, of which he gives a charming description.  “The village,” he says, “stands on a slight elevation in the midst of a plain, surrounded on all sides by springs and streams, not rapid and noisy like those of Vaucluse, but clear and modest.  They wind in such a manner, that you know not either whither they are going, or whence they have come.  As if to imitate the dances of the nymphs, they approach, they retire, they unite, and they separate alternately.  At last, after having formed a kind of labyrinth, they all meet, and pour themselves into the same reservoir.”  John Visconti had chosen this situation whereon to build a Carthusian monastery.  This was what tempted Petrarch to found here a little establishment.  He wished at first to live within the walls of the monastery, and the Carthusians made him welcome to do so; but he could not dispense with servants and horses, and he feared that the drunkenness of the former might trouble the silence of the sacred retreat.  He therefore hired a house in the neighbourhood of the holy brothers, to whom he repaired at all hours of the day.  He called this house his Linterno, in memory of Scipio Africanus, whose country-house bore that name.  The peasants, hearing him call the domicile Linterno, corrupted the word into Inferno, and, from this mispronunciation, the place was often jocularly called by that name.

Petrarch was scarcely settled in this agreeable solitude, when he received a letter from his friend Settimo, asking him for an exact and circumstantial detail of his circumstances and mode of living, of his plans and occupations, of his son John, &c.  His answer was prompt, and is not uninteresting.  “The course of my life,” he says, “has always been uniform ever since the frost of age has quenched the ardour of my youth, and particularly that fatal flame which so long tormented me.  But what do I say?” he continues; “it is a celestial dew which has produced this extinction.  Though I have often changed my place of abode, I have always led nearly the same kind of life.  What it is, none knows better than yourself.  I once lived beside you for two years.  Call to mind how I was then occupied, and you will know my present occupations.  You understand me so well that you ought to be able to guess, not only what I am doing, but what I am dreaming.

“Like a traveller, I am quickening my steps in proportion as I approach the term of my course.  I read and write night and day; the one occupation refreshes me from the fatigue of the other These are my employments—­these are my pleasures.  My tasks increase upon my hands; one begets another; and I am dismayed when I look at what I have undertaken to accomplish in so short a space as the remainder of my life. * * * My health is good; my body is so robust that neither ripe years, nor grave occupations, nor abstinence, nor penance, can totally subdue that kicking ass on whom I am constantly making war.  I count upon the grace of Heaven, without which I should infallibly fall, as I fell in other times.  All my reliance is on Christ.  With regard to my fortune, I am exactly in a just mediocrity, equally distant from the two extremes * * * *