To escape the difficulty, he projected a treatise on the best mode of governing a State, and on the qualities required in the person who has such a charge.

This subject furnished occasion for giving indirect praises, and, at the same time, for pointing out some defects which he had remarked in his patron's government.
It cannot be denied that there are some excellent maxims respecting government in this treatise, and that it was a laudable work for the fourteenth century.

But since that period the subject has been so often discussed by minds of the first order, that we should look in vain into Petrarch's Essay for any truths that have escaped their observation.
Nature offers herself in virgin beauty to the primitive poet.

But abstract truth comes not to the philosopher, till she has been tried by the test of time.
After his return from Venice, Petrarch only languished.

A low fever, that undermined his constitution, left him but short intervals of health, but made no change in his mode of life; he passed the greater part of the day in reading or writing.