fitting that your work should be dedicated to you rather than to anyone
else; and it is for you to judge whether I have, by this change of
dress, injured or embellished the original. The story returns whence
it came; it knows its judge, its home, and the way thither. As you and
everyone who reads this knows, it is you and not I who must render
account for what is essentially yours. If anyone asks me whether this
is all true, whether it is a history or a story, I reply in the words
of Sallust, "I refer you to the author "--to wit, my friend Giovanni.
With so much of introduction I begin....[3]
My object in thus re-writing your tale was not to induce the women
of our time to imitate the patience of this wife, which seems to
me almost beyond imitation, but to lead my readers to emulate the
example of feminine constancy, and to submit themselves to God with
the same courage as did this woman to her husband. Although, as the
Apostle James tells us, "God cannot be tempted with evil, and he
himself tempteth no man," he still may prove us, and often permits us
to be beset with many and grievous trials, not that he may know our
character, which he knew before we were created, but in order that our
weakness should be made plain to ourselves by obvious and familiar
proofs. Anyone, it seems to me, amply deserves to be reckoned among the
heroes of mankind who suffers without a murmur for God, what this poor
peasant woman bore for her mortal husband.
My affection for you has induced me to write at an advanced age what I
should hardly have undertaken even as a young man. Whether what I have
narrated be true or false I do not know, but the fact that you wrote it
would seem sufficient to justify the inference that it is but a tale.
Foreseeing this question, I have prefaced my translation with the
statement that the responsibility for the story rests with the author;
that is, with you. And now let me tell you my experiences with this
narrative, or tale, as I prefer to call it.
In the first place, I gave it to one of our mutual friends in Padua
to read, a man of excellent parts and wide attainments. When scarcely
half-way through the composition, he was suddenly arrested by a burst
of tears. When again, after a short pause, he made a manful attempt
to continue, he was again interrupted by a sob. He then realised
that he could go no farther himself, and handed the story to one of
his companions, a man of education, to finish. How others may view
this occurrence I cannot, of course, say; for myself, I put a most
favourable construction upon it, believing that I recognise the
indications of a most compassionate disposition; a more kindly nature,
indeed, I never remember to have met. As I saw him weep as he read, the
words of the Satirist came back to me:
"Nature, who gave us tears, by that alone
Proclaims she made the feeling heart our own;
And 't is our noblest, sense."[4]
Some time after, another friend of ours, from Verona (for all is common
between us, even our friends), having heard of the effect produced
by the story in the first instance, wished to read it for himself.
I readily complied, as he was not only a good friend, but a man of
ability. He read the narrative from beginning to end without stopping
once. Neither his face nor his voice betrayed the least emotion, not
a tear or a sob escaped him. "I too," he said at the end, "would have
wept, for the subject certainly excites pity, and the style is well
adapted to call forth tears, and I am not hard-hearted; but I believed,
and still believe, that this is all an invention. If it were true, what
woman, whether of Rome or any other nation, could be compared with
this Griselda? Where do we find the equal of this conjugal devotion,
where such faith, such extraordinary patience and constancy?" I made no
reply to this reasoning, for I did not wish to run the risk of a bitter
debate in the midst of our good-humoured and friendly discussion.
But I had a reply ready. There are some who think that whatever is
difficult for them must be impossible for others; they must measure
others by themselves, in order to maintain their superiority. Yet there
have been many, and there may still be many, to whom acts are easy
which are commonly held to be impossible. Who is there who would not,
for example, regard a Curtius, a Mucius, or the Decii, among our own
people, as pure fictions; or, among foreign nations, Codrus and the
Philæni; or, since we are speaking of woman, Portia, or Hypsicratia,
or Alcestis, and others like them? But these are actual historical
persons. And indeed I do not see why one who can face death for
another, should not be capable of encountering any trial or form of
suffering....[5]
1: This letter, written in 1373 and containing a Latin translation of
Boccaccio's story of Griselda, is printed as a separate work in the
_Opera_ (1581), p. 540 _sqq_., but appears as _Sen_., xvii., 3, in
Fracassetti's Italian version.
2: The additions are so considerable that Fracassetti, in translating
this letter into Italian, could make use of the words of Boccaccio's
original in scarcely more than half of the tale.
3: Petrarch's version of the tale is here omitted.
4: Juvenal, xv., 131-3, as translated by William Gifford.
5: The close of this letter is given above, pp. 53 _sqq_. (..."a mole
amusing itself with a mirror.")
* * * * *
_On the Italian Language and Literature_
_To Boccaccio_[1]
"I have somewhat to say unto thee," if a poor sinner may use the words
of his Saviour, and this something for which you are listening, what
should it be but what I am wont to tell you? So prepare your mind for
patience and your ears for reproaches. For, although nothing could
be more alike than our two minds, I have often noticed with surprise
that nothing could be more unlike than our acts and resolutions. I
frequently ask myself how this happens, not only in your case but in
that of certain others of my friends, in whom I note the same contrast.
I find no other explanation than that our common mother, nature, made
us the same, but that habit, which is said to be a second nature, has
rendered us unlike. Would that we might have lived together, for then
we should have been but one mind in two bodies.
You may imagine now that I have something really important to tell you,
but you are mistaken;--and, as you well know, a thing must be trivial
indeed which the author himself declares to be unimportant, for our own
utterances are so dear to us that scarcely anyone is a good judge of
his own performances, so prone are we to be misled by partiality for
ourselves and our works. You, among many thousands, are the only one
to be betrayed into a false estimate of your compositions by aversion
and contempt, instead of inordinate love,--unless, mayhap, I am myself
deceived in this matter, and attribute to humility what is really due
to pride. What I mean by all this you shall now hear.
You are familiar, no doubt, with that widely distributed and vulgar,
set of men who live by words, and those not their own, and who have
increased to such an irritating extent among us. They are persons of
no great ability, but of retentive memories; of great industry too,
but of greater audacity. They haunt the antechambers of kings and
potentates, naked if it were not for the poetic vesture that they
have filched from others. Any especially good bit which this one or
that one has turned off, they seize upon, more particularly if it be
in the mother tongue, and recite it with huge gusto. In this way they
strive to gain the favour of the nobility, and procure money, clothes,
or other gifts. Their stock-in-trade is partly picked up here and
there, partly obtained directly from the writers themselves, either by
begging, or, where cupidity or poverty exists, for money. This last
case is described by the Satirist: "He will die of hunger if he does
not succeed in selling to Paris his yet unheard _Agave_."[2]
You can easily imagine how often these fellows have pestered me, and I
doubt not others, with their disgusting fawning. It is true I suffer
less than formerly, owing to my altered studies, or to respect for my
age, or to repulses already received; for, lest they should get in the
habit of annoying me, I have often sharply refused to aid them, and
have not allowed myself to be affected by any amount of insistence.
Sometimes indeed, especially when I knew the applicant to be humble
and needy, a certain benevolent instinct has led me to assist the poor
fellow to a living, with such skill as I possessed. My aid might be of
permanent use to the recipient, while it cost me only a short hour of
work. Some of those whom I had been induced to assist, and who had left
me with their wish fulfilled, but otherwise poor and ill-clad, returned
shortly after arrayed in silks, with well-filled bellies and purses,
to thank me for the assistance which had enabled them to cast off the
burden of poverty. On such occasions I have sometimes been led to vow
that I would never refuse this peculiar kind of alms; but there always
comes a moment, when, wearied by their importunities, I retract the
resolve.
When I asked some of these beggars why they always came to me, and
never applied to others, and in particular to you, for assistance, they
replied that so far as you were concerned they had often done so, but
never with success. While I was wondering that one who was so generous
with his property should be so niggardly with his words, they added
that you had burnt all the verses which you had ever written in the
vulgar tongue. This, instead of satisfying me, only served to increase
my astonishment. When I asked the reason of your doing this, they all
confessed ignorance and held their tongues, except one. He said that
he believed--whether he had actually heard it somewhere or other, I
do not know--that you intended to revise all the things which you had
written both in your earlier days, and, later, in your prime, in order
to give your works, in this revision, the advantage of a mature,--I am
tempted to say hoary, mind. Such confidence in the prolongation of our
most uncertain existence, especially at your age, seemed to both of us
exaggerated. Although I have the greatest confidence in your discretion
and vigour of mind, my surprise was only increased by what I had heard.
What a perverted idea, I said, to burn up what you wished to revise, so
as to have nothing left for revision!
My astonishment continued until at last, on coming to this city, I
became intimate with our Donato, who is so faithful and devoted a
friend of yours. It was from him that I learned recently, in the course
of our daily conversation, not only the fact which I had already heard,
but also the explanation of it, which had so long puzzled me. He said
that in your earlier years you had been especially fond of writing in
the vulgar tongue, and had devoted much time and pains to it, until
in the course of your researches and reading you had happened upon
my youthful compositions in the vernacular. Then your enthusiasm for
writing similar things suddenly cooled. Not content simply to refrain
from analogous work in the future, you conceived a great dislike
to what you had already done and burned everything, not with the
idea of correcting but of destroying. In this way you deprived both
yourself and posterity of the fruits of your labours in this field
of literature, and for no better reason than that you thought what
you had written was inferior to my productions. But your dislike was
ill-founded and the sacrifice inexpedient. As for your motive, that is
doubtful. Was it humility, which despised itself, or pride, which would
be second to none? You who can see your own heart must judge. I can
only wander among the various possible conjectures, writing to you, as
usual, as if I were talking to myself.
I congratulate you, then, on regarding yourself as inferior to those
whose superior you really are. I would far rather share that error than
his who, being really inferior, believes himself to be on a higher
plane. This reminds me of Lucan of Cordova, a man of the ardent spirit
and the genius which pave the way alike to great eminence and to an
abyss of failure. Finding himself far advanced in his studies while
still young, he became, upon turning over in his mind his age and the
successful beginnings of his career, so puffed up that he ventured
to compare himself with Virgil. In reciting a portion of a work on
the Civil War, which was interrupted by his death, he said in his
introductory remarks, "Do I in any way fall short of the _Culex?_"[3]
Whether this arrogant speech was noticed by any friend of the poet, or
what answer he received, I do not know; for myself, I have often, since
I read the passage, inwardly replied indignantly to this braggart: "My
fine fellow, thy performance may indeed equal the _Culex_, but what a
gulf between it and the _Æneid!_" But why, then, do I not praise your
humility, who judge me to be your superior, and praise it the more
highly in contrast with the boast of this upstart, who would believe
himself superior, or at least equal, to Virgil?
But there is something else here which I would gladly discover, but
which is of so obscure a nature that it is not easily cleared up
with the pen. I will, however, do the best I can. I fear that your
remarkable humility may after all be only pride. This will doubtless
seem to many a novel and even surprising name for humility, and if it
should prove offensive I will use some other term. I only fear that
this signal exhibition of humility is not altogether free from some
admixture of haughtiness. I have seen men at a banquet, or some other
assembly, rise and voluntarily take the lowest place, because they
had not been assigned the head of the table, and this under cover of
humility, although pride was the real motive. I have seen another so
weak as even to leave the room. Thus anger sometimes, and sometimes
pride, leads men to act as though one who did not enjoy the highest
seat, which in the nature of things cannot be assigned to more than a
single individual, was necessarily unworthy of any place except perhaps
the lowest. But there are degrees of glory as well as of merit.
As for you, you show your humility in not assuming the first place.
Some, inferior to you both in talents and style, have laid claim to
it, and have aroused our indignation, not unmixed with merriment, by
their absurd aspirations. Would that the support of the vulgar, which
they sometimes enjoy, weighed no more in the market-place than with the
dwellers on Parnassus. But not to be able to take the second or third
rank, does not that smack of genuine pride? Suppose for the moment that
I surpass you, I, who would so gladly be your equal; suppose that you
are surpassed by the great master of our mother tongue; beware lest
there be more pride in refusing to see yourself distanced by one or the
other, especially by your fellow-citizen, or, at most, by a very few,
than in soliciting the distinction of the first place for yourself. To
long for supremacy may be regarded as the sign of a great mind, but
to despise what only approaches supremacy is a certain indication of
arrogance.
I have heard that our Old Man of Ravenna,[4] who is by no means a
bad judge in such matters, is accustomed, whenever the conversation
turns on these matters, to assign you the third place. If this
displeases you, and if you think that I prevent your attaining to the
first rank--though I am really no obstacle--I willingly renounce all
pretensions to precedence, and leave you the second place. If you
refuse this I do not think that you ought to be pardoned. If the very
first alone are illustrious, it is easy to see how innumerable are the
obscure, and how few enjoy the radiance of glory. Consider, moreover,
how much safer, and even higher, is the second place. There is someone
to receive the first attacks of envy, and, at the risk of his own
reputation, to indicate your path; for by watching his course, you will
learn when to follow it, and when to avoid it. You have someone to aid
you to throw off all slothful habits through your effort to overtake
him. You are spurred on to equal him, and not be forever second. Such
an one serves as a goad to noble minds and often accomplishes wonders.
He who knows how to put up with the second place will ere long deserve
the first, while he who scorns the second place has already begun to be
unworthy even of that. If you will but consult your memory, you will
scarcely find a first-rate commander, philosopher, or poet, who did not
reach the top through the aid of just such stimulus.
Furthermore, if the first place is to most persons a source of
complacent satisfaction with themselves, and of envy on the part of
others, it is certainly also liable to produce inertia. The student
as well as the lover is spurred on by jealousy: love without rivalry,
and merit without emulation are equally prone to languish. Industrious
poverty is much to be preferred to idle opulence. It is better to
struggle up a steep declivity with watchful care than to lie sunk in
shameful ease; better and safer to trust to the aid of active virtue
than to rely upon the distinction of an idle reputation.
These are good reasons, it seems to me, for cheerfully accepting the
second place. But what if you are assigned to the third or the fourth?
Will this rouse your anger? or have you forgotten the passage where
Seneca defends Fabianus Papirius against Lucilius? After assigning
Cicero a higher rank, he remarked: "It is no slight thing to be second
only to the highest." Then, naming Asinius Pollio next to Cicero, he
added, "Nor in such a case is the third place to be despised." Lastly,
placing Livy in the fourth rank, he concluded, "What a vast number
of writers does he excel who is vanquished by three only, and these
three the most gifted!" Does not this apply very well to you, my dear
friend? Only, whatever place you occupy, or whomsoever you may seem to
see ahead of you, it cannot, in my judgment, be I who precede you. So,
eschew the flames, and have mercy on your verses.
If, however, you and others are, in spite of what I say, thoroughly
convinced that I must, willy-nilly, be your superior in literary rank,
do you really feel aggrieved, and regard it as a shameful thing to be
ranked next to me? If this be true, permit me to say that I have long
been deceived in you, and that neither your natural modesty nor your
love of me is what I had hoped. True friends place those whom they love
above themselves. They not only wish to be excelled, but experience an
extreme pleasure in being outstripped, just as no fond father would
deny that his greatest pleasure consisted in being surpassed by his
son. I hoped and hope still that I am inferior to you. I do not claim
to be like a dear son to you, or to believe that my reputation is
dearer to you than your own. I remember, though, that you, in a moment
of friendly anger, once reproached me for this. If you were really
sincere, you ought to grant me the right of way with joy. Instead of
giving up the race, you should press after me with all your might, and
so prevent any other competitor from thrusting himself between us and
stealing your place. He who sits in the chariot or runs by his friend's
side does not ask who is first, but is only anxious that they two
shall be as near as possible. Nothing is sweeter than the longed-for
closeness of companionship. Love is everything, precedence next to
nothing, among friends. The first are last and the last first, for all
are really one in friendship.
So much for the case against you. Let us now turn to the excuses for
your conduct. In spite of your own explanation and that which comes to
me through such a very good friend of yours, I have tried to discover
some higher motive for your action than that which you mention; for the
same act may be good or bad according to the motives which dictate it.
I will tell you, then, what has occurred to me.
You did not destroy your productions, in a manner so unfair both
to you and to them, through false pride, which is quite foreign to
your gentle character; nor because you were jealous of someone else,
or dissatisfied with your own lot. You were actuated by a noble
indignation against the emptiness and vanity of our age, which in its
crass ignorance corrupts or, far worse, despises everything good. You
wished to withdraw your productions from the judgment of the men of
to-day, and, as Virginius once slew his own daughter to save her from
shame, so you have committed to the flames your beautiful inventions,
the children of your intellect, to prevent their becoming the prey
of such a rabble. And now, my dear friend, how near the truth have
I guessed? I have indeed often thought of doing the same for my own
compositions in the vulgar tongue, few as they are; and it was my own
experience which suggested this explanation of your conduct. I should
perhaps have done so, had they not been so widely circulated as to
have long ago escaped my control. And yet, on the other hand, I have
sometimes harboured quite the opposite design, and thought of devoting
my whole attention to the vernacular.
To be sure, the Latin, in both prose and poetry, is undoubtedly the
nobler language, but for that very reason it has been so thoroughly
developed by earlier writers that neither we nor anyone else may expect
to add very much to it. The vernacular, on the other hand, has but
recently been discovered, and, though it has been ravaged by many,
it still remains uncultivated, in spite of a few earnest labourers,
and still shows itself capable of much improvement and enrichment.
Stimulated by this thought, and by the enterprise of youth, I began
an extensive work in that language. I laid the foundations of the
structure, and got together my lime and stones and wood. And then I
began to consider a little more carefully the times in which we live,
the fact that our age is the mother of pride and indolence, and that
the ability of the vainglorious fellows who would be my judges, and
their peculiar grace of delivery is such that they can hardly be said
to recite the writings of others, but rather to mangle them. Hearing
their performances again and again, and turning the matter over in my
mind, I concluded at length that I was building upon unstable earth
and shifting sand, and should simply waste my labours and see the
work of my hands levelled by the common herd. Like one who finds a
great serpent across his track, I stopped and changed my route,--for a
higher and more direct one, I hope. Although the short things I once
wrote in the vulgar tongue are, as I have said, so scattered that they
now belong to the public rather than to me, I shall take precautions
against having my more important works torn to pieces in the same way.
And yet why should I find fault with the unenlightenment of the common
people, when those who call themselves learned afford so much more
just and serious a ground for complaint? Besides many other ridiculous
peculiarities, these people add to their gross ignorance an exaggerated
and most disgusting pride. It is this that leads them to carp at the
reputation of those whose most trivial sayings they were once proud
to comprehend, in even the most fragmentary fashion. O inglorious
age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble
art,--that dares to declare itself not only equal but superior to the
glorious past. I say nothing of the vulgar, the dregs of mankind,
whose sayings and opinions may raise a laugh but hardly merit serious
censure. I will say nothing of the military class and the leaders
in war, who do not blush to assert that their time has beheld the
culmination and perfection of military art, when there is no doubt
that this art has degenerated and is utterly going to ruin in their
hands. They have neither skill nor intelligence, but rely entirely upon
indolence and chance. They go to war decked out as if for a wedding,
bent on meat and drink and the gratification of their lust. They think
much more of flight than they do of victory. Their skill lies not in
striking the adversary, but in holding out the hand of submission;
not in terrifying the enemy, but in pleasing the eyes of their
mistresses.[5] But even these false notions may be excused in view of
the utter ignorance and want of instruction on the part of those who
hold them.