Part 12

“And this I say as well of writing as of speaking: in which however some things are required that are not needful in writing,—such as a good voice, not too thin and soft like a woman’s, nor yet so stern and rough as to smack of the rustic’s,—but sonorous, clear, sweet and well sounding, with distinct enunciation, and with proper bearing and gestures; which I think consist in certain movements of the whole body, not affected or violent, but tempered by a calm face and with a play of the eyes that shall give an effect of grace, accord with the words, and as far as possible express also, together with the gestures, the speaker’s intent and feeling.

“But all these things would be vain and of small moment, if the thoughts expressed by the words were not beautiful, ingenious, acute, elegant and grave,—according to the need.”

34.—Then my lord Morello said:

“If this Courtier speaks with so much elegance and grace, I doubt if anyone will be found among us who will understand him.”

“Nay, he will be understood by everyone,” replied the Count, “because facility is no impediment to elegance.

“Nor would I have him speak always of grave matters, but of amusing things, of games, jests and waggery, according to the occasion; but sensibly of everything, and with readiness and lucid fullness; and in no place let him show vanity or childish folly. And again when he is speaking on an obscure or difficult subject, I would have him carefully explain his meaning with precision of both word and thought, and make every ambiguity clear and plain with a certain touch of unpedantic care. Likewise, where there is occasion, let him know how to speak with dignity and force, to arouse those emotions that are part of our nature, and to kindle them or to move them according to the need. Sometimes, with that simple candour that makes it seem as if nature herself were speaking, let him know how to soften them, and as it were to intoxicate them with sweetness, and so easily withal that the listener shall think that with very little effort he too could reach that excellence, and when he tries, shall find himself very far behind.

“In such fashion would I have our Courtier speak and write; and not only choose rich and elegant words from every part of Italy, but I should even praise him for sometimes using some of those French and Spanish terms that are already accepted by our custom. Thus it would not displease me if on occasion he were to say, primor (excellence); or acertare (to succeed), aventurare (to run a risk successfully); or ripassare una persona con ragionamento, meaning to sound a person and to talk with him in order to gain perfect knowledge of him; or un cavalier senza rimproccio (a cavalier without reproach), attilato (elegant), creato d’un principe (a prince’s creature), and other like terms, provided he might hope to be understood.

“Sometimes I would have him use a few words in a sense other than that proper to them, to transpose them aptly, and as it were to graft them, like the branch of a tree, upon a more appropriate trunk,—so as to make them more attractive and beautiful, and as it were to bring things within the range of our vision, and within hand-touch as we say, to the delight of him who hears or reads. Nor would I have him scruple to form new words and in new figures of speech, deriving them tastefully from the Latins, as of old the Latins derived them from the Greeks.

35.—“Now if among the lettered men of good talent and judgment who to-day are found in our midst, there were a few who would take care to write in this language (as I have described) things worthy of being read, we should soon see it studied and abounding in beautiful terms and figures, and capable of being written in as well as is any other whatsoever; and if it were not pure old Tuscan, it would be Italian,—universal, copious and varied, and in a way like a delightful garden full of various flowers and fruits. Nor would this be a novel thing; for from the four dialects that the Greek writers had in use, they culled words, forms and figures from each as they saw fit, and thence they brought forth another dialect which was called ‘common,’ and later they called all five by the single name Greek. And although the Attic dialect was more elegant, pure and copious than the others, good writers who were not Athenians by birth did not so affect it as to be unrecognizable by their style and by the perfume (as it were) and essence of their native speech. Nor yet were they disprized for this; on the contrary those who tried to seem too Athenian, were censured for it. Among the Latin writers too, many non-Romans were highly esteemed in their day, although there was not found in them that typical purity of the Roman tongue which men of other race can rarely acquire. Thus Titus Livius was not at all discarded, although someone professed to have detected a Paduan flavour in him; nor was Virgil, albeit reproached with not speaking Roman. Moreover, as you know, many writers of barbarian race were read and esteemed at Rome.

“We, on the contrary, much more strict than the ancients, needlessly impose certain new laws upon ourselves, and with the beaten highways before our eyes, we seek to go along the by-paths; for in our own language,—of which, as of all others, the office is to express thought well and clearly,—we delight ourselves with obscurity; and calling it the vulgar tongue, we try in speaking it to use words that are understood neither by the vulgar nor yet by the gentle and lettered, and are no longer used in any place; unmindful that all the good writers of old disapproved words discarded by custom. Which to my thinking, you do not rightly understand; since you say that if some fault of speech is widely prevalent among the ignorant, it ought not for that reason to be called custom or accepted as a rule of speech, and from what I have heard you sometimes say, you would have us use Campidoglio in place of Capitolio; Girolamo for Hieronymo; aldace for audace; and padrone for patrone, and other words corrupt and spoiled like these; because they are found written thus by some ignorant old Tuscan, and because the Tuscan country folk speak thus to-day.

“Hence I believe that good custom in speech springs from men who have talent and who have gained good judgment from study and experience, and who therefore agree and consent to accept the words that to them seem good, which are recognized by a certain innate judgment and not by any art or rule. Do you not know that figures of speech, which give so much grace and splendour to an oration, are all infringements of grammatical rules, yet accepted and confirmed by usage, because, although unable to offer other reason, they give pleasure and seem to carry suavity and sweetness to our very sense of hearing? And this I believe to be good custom,—of which the Romans, the Neapolitans, the Lombards and the rest, may be as capable as the Tuscans are.

36.—“It is very true that in every language certain things are always good, such as ease, good order, richness, beautiful sentences, harmonious periods; and on the contrary affectation and other things opposed to these, are bad. But among words there are some that remain good for a time, then grow antiquated and wholly lose their grace; others gain strength and come to be esteemed. For as the seasons of the year despoil the earth of flowers and fruits and then clothe it anew with others, so time causes those primal words to decay, and use makes others to be born again and gives them grace and dignity, until they in their turn meet their death, consumed by the envious gnawing of time; for in the end both we and all our concerns are mortal. Consider that we no longer have any knowledge of the Oscan tongue. The Provençal, although it may be said to have been but lately celebrated by noble writers, is not now understood by the inhabitants of that country. Hence I think, as my lord Magnifico has well said, that if Petrarch and Boccaccio were alive at this time, they would not use many words that we find in their writings: therefore it does not seem to me well for us to copy these words. I applaud very highly those who know how to imitate that which ought to be imitated, but I do not at all believe that it is impossible to write well without imitating,—and particularly in this language of ours, wherein we may be aided by usage: which I should not dare say of Latin.”

37.—The messer Federico said:

“Why would you have usage more esteemed in the vernacular than in Latin?”

“Nay,” replied the Count, “I esteem usage as mistress of both the one and the other. But since those men to whom the Latin tongue was as natural as the vernacular now is to us, are no longer on earth, we must needs learn from their writings that which they learned from usage. Nor does ancient speech mean anything more than ancient usage of speech, and it would be a silly business to like ancient speech for no other reason than a wish to speak as men used to speak rather than as they now speak.”

“Then,” replied messer Federico, “the ancients did not imitate?”

“I believe,” said the Count, “that many of them did, but not in everything. And if Virgil had imitated Hesiod in everything, he would not have surpassed his master; nor Cicero, Crassus; nor Ennius, his predecessors. You know Homer is so ancient that many believe he is the first heroic poet in time as he is also in excellence of diction: and whom would you think he imitated?”

“Some other poet,” replied messer Federico, “more ancient than he, of whom we have no knowledge because of excessive antiquity.”

“Then whom,” said the Count, “would you say Petrarch and Boccaccio imitated, who were on earth only three days since, one may say?”

“I know not,” replied messer Federico; “but we may believe that even their minds were directed to imitation, although we do not know of whom.”

The Count replied:

“We may believe that they who were imitated, surpassed those who imitated them; and if they were admirable, it would be too great a marvel that their name and fame should be so soon extinguished. But I believe that their real master was aptitude and their own native judgment; and at this there is no one who ought to wonder, since nearly always the summit of every excellence may be approached by diverse roads. Nor is there anything that has not in it many things of the same sort which are dissimilar and yet intrinsically deserving of equal praise.

“Consider music, the harmonies of which are now grave and slow, now very fast and of novel moods and means; yet all give pleasure, albeit for different reasons: as is seen in Bidon’s manner of singing, which is so skilful, ready, vehement, fervid, and of such varied melodies, that the listener’s spirits are moved and inflamed, and thus entranced seem to be lifted up to heaven. Nor does our friend Marchetto Cara move us less by his singing, but with a gentler harmony; because he softens and penetrates our souls by placid means and full of plaintive sweetness, gently stirring them to sweet emotion.

“Again, various things give equal pleasure to our eyes, so that we can with difficulty decide which are more pleasing to them. You know that in painting Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgio da Castelfranco, are very excellent, yet they are all unlike in their work; so that no one of them seems to lack anything in his own manner, since each is known as most perfect in his style.

ANGELO AMBROGINI POLIZIANO 1454-1494 ]

Reduced from Anderson’s photograph (no. 8148) of a part of the fresco, “Zacharias in the Temple,” in the Church of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, by Domenico Bigordi, better known as Ghirlandajo, (1449-1494).

“It is the same with many Greek and Latin poets, who, although different in their writing, are equal in their fame. The orators, too, have always had so much diversity among themselves, that almost every age has produced and prized a type of orator peculiar to its own time; and these have been different not only from their predecessors and successors, but from one another: as it is written of Isocrates, Lysias, Æschines, and many others among the Greeks,—all excellent, yet each resembling no one but himself. So, among the Latins, Carbo, Lælius, Scipio Africanus, Galba, Sulpicius, Cotta, Gracchus, Marcus Antonius, Crassus, and so many others that it would be tedious to name them,—all good and very different one from another; so that if a man were able to consider all the orators that have been in the world, he would find as many kinds of oratory as of orators. I think I remember too that Cicero in a certain place makes Marcus Antonius say to Sulpicius that there are many who imitate no man and yet arrive at the highest pitch of excellence; and he speaks of certain ones who had introduced a new form and figure of speech, beautiful but not usual among the orators of that time, wherein they imitated no one but themselves. For that reason he affirms also that masters ought to consider the pupils’ nature, and taking this as guide ought to direct and aid them to the path towards which their aptitude and natural disposition incline them. Hence I believe, dear messer Federico, that if a man has no innate affinity for any particular author, it is not well to force him to imitate, because the vigour of his faculty languishes and is impeded when turned from the channel in which it would have made progress had that channel not been barred.

“Therefore I do not see how it can be well, instead of enriching this language of ours and giving it spirit and grandeur and light, to make it poor, thin, humble and obscure, and to try to restrict it in such narrow bounds that everyone shall be forced to imitate Petrarch and Boccaccio alone; and how, in respect of language, we ought not also to give credence to Poliziano, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, to Francesco Diacceto, and to some others who are also Tuscans and perhaps of no less learning and judgment than were Petrarch and Boccaccio. And great pity would it be indeed to set a limit, and not to surpass that which almost the earliest writers achieved, and to deny that so many men of such noble genius can ever find more than one beautiful form of expression in this language which is proper and natural to them. But to-day there are certain scrupulous souls, who so frighten the listener with the cult and ineffable mysteries of this Tuscan tongue of theirs, as to put even many a noble and learned man in such fear, that he dare not open his mouth and confesses that he does not know how to speak the very language which he learned in swaddling clothes from his nurse.