"The Father of Italian Prose"]

Through Boccaccio, whom he first met in 1350, Petrarch's work was made
known in Florence, then the wealthiest and most artistic and literary city
in the world, [5] and there the new knowledge and method were warmly
received. Boccaccio equaled Petrarch in his passion for the ancient
writers, hunting for them wherever he thought they might be found. One of
his pupils has left us a melancholy picture of the library at Monte
Cassino, as Boccaccio found it at the time of his visit (R. 126). He wrote
a book of popular tales and romances, filled with the modern spirit, which
made him the father of Italian prose as Dante was of Italian poetry;
prepared the first dictionaries of classical geography and Greek
mythology; and was the first western scholar to learn Greek.

"In the dim light of learning's dawn they stand,
Flushed with the first glimpses of a long-lost land."

A CENTURY OF RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION. The work done by these two
friends in discovering and editing was taken up by others, and during the
century (1333-1433) dating from the first great "find" of Petrarch the
principal additions to Latin literature were made. The monasteries and
castles of Europe were ransacked in the hope of discovering something new,
or more accurate copies of previously known books. At monasteries and
churches as widely separated as Monte Cassino, near Naples: Lodi, near
Milan; Milan, itself; and Vercelli, in Italy: Saint Gall and other
monasteries, in Switzerland: Paris; Cluny, near the present city of Macon;
Langres, near the source of the Marne; and monasteries in the Vosges
Mountains, in France: Corvey, in Westphalia; and Hersfeld, Cologne, and
Mainz in Germany--important finds were made. [6] Thus widely had the old
Latin authors been scattered, copied, and forgotten. In a letter to a