[Footnote 1: The Memoires sur la Vie de Francois Petrarque,
(Amsterdam, 1764, 1767, 3 vols. in 4to.,) form a copious,
original, and entertaining work, a labor of love, composed
from the accurate study of Petrarch and his contemporaries;
but the hero is too often lost in the general history of the
age, and the author too often languishes in the affectation
of politeness and gallantry. In the preface to his first
volume, he enumerates and weighs twenty Italian biographers,
who have professedly treated of the same subject.]