OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

can applied himself with eager curiosity and as- chap.siduous diligence to the study of the Greek lau-guage; and in a laborious struggle with the dry- studies ofness and difficulty of the first rudiments, he be- i'« a i33^.gan to reach the sense, and to feel the spirit, of 13rj -poets and philosophers, whose minds were con-genial to his own. But he was soon deprivedof the society and lessons of this useful assis-tant: Barlaam relinquished his fruitless embassy;and, on his return to Greece , he rashly provokedthe swarms of fanatic monks, by attempting tosubstitute the light of reason to that of their na-vel. After a separation of three years, the twofriends again met in the court of Naples; butthe generous pupil renounced the fairest occa-sion of improvement; and by his recommenda-tion Barlaam was finally settled in a small bi-shopric of his native Calabria / The manifoldavocations of Petrarch , love and friendship, hisvarious correspondence and frequent journies,the Roman laurel, and his elaborate composi-tions in prose and verse, in Latin and Italian ,diverted him from a foreign idiom; and as headvanced in life, the attainment of the Greek lan-guage was the object of his wishes, rather thanof his hopes. When he w'as about fifty years ofage, a Byzantine ambassador, his friend, and amaster of both tongues, presented him with acopy of Homer; and the answer of Petrarch is

f The bishopric to which Barlaam retired was the old Locri, in themiddle ages Sancta Cyriaca, and by corruption Hicracium. Gerace(Dissert. Cliorographica Italise medii JEv i, p. 312). The dives opmnof the Norman times soon lapsed into poverty, since even the elntrchwas poor; yet the town still contains 3000 inhabitants (Swinburne,p. 840).