bearing you my thanks. And yet he also stays, very willingly, with
me; a dear friend, to whom I give the credit of being almost the only
man of letters for whose sake I would go to the length of spending
my time, when the difficulties of life are pressing on me so sharply
and inexorably and the cares pertaining to my literary labours make
the longest life seem far too short, in transcribing compositions not
my own. I may have done such things in former days, when I thought
myself rich in time, and had not learned how stealthily it slips away:
but I now know that this is of all our riches the most uncertain and
fleeting; the years are closing in upon me now, and there is no longer
any room for deviation from the beaten path. I am forced to practice
strict economy; I only hope that I have not begun too late. But Cicero!
he assuredly is worthy of a part of even the little that I still have
left. Farewell.
[1] _Fam_., xviii., 12.
* * * * *
The two letters that follow, and that conclude this chapter, are
given as indicative of the various ways in which Petrarch brought his
enthusiasm for the classics to bear upon his contemporaries. It was
partly through such conscious effort, and partly through the general
spirit and tone of all his letters, and of his other writings too, that
he affected the thought of his time.
_Ignorance and Presumption Rebuked._
_To Giovanni Andrea di Bologna._[1]
I find it hard to tell you how much my ears, fatigued by the clamour of
the multitude, have been refreshed by your letter, which I have read
and re-read several times over. You thought it verbose, as I learned
at the end; but I found nothing to criticise in it except its brevity.
Your threat at the close, that in the future you will be more concise,
I did not like. I should prefer to have you more detailed. But that
shall be as you please; you are my master; it is not for you to think
of my preferences, but for me to try to adapt myself to yours.
This, however, does not necessarily mean that the game is to be
entirely in your hands. Things often turn out, as you very well know,
quite differently from what we expect. It is possible that you may
once in a while hear something from me that would force even the most
devoted lover of silence to speak out. Do you want me to show you,
here and now, that I can live up to that threat? Very well; I will do
it. But first of all let me protest that I entertain the same opinion
concerning you that Macrobius does of Aristotle; begotten perhaps by
my love for you, perhaps by the truth,--I do not attempt to decide. I
consider you scarcely capable of ignorance, upon any subject whatever.
If anything. does escape you that seems contrary to fact, I conclude
either that you have spoken a little hastily, or, as Macrobius says,
that you were indulging in a playful jest. I am not thinking now of
what you wrote concerning Jerome, that you place him above all the
other fathers of the church. Your opinion upon that subject is of long
standing and widely known, and not at all new to me. Although it really
seems to me idle to contend thus from the comparative point of view
about geniuses who are all superlative, still, on the other hand, you
cannot be mistaken in what you say. Whatever wins your approval will be
greatest and best. And yet I remember that I used to debate this matter
a great deal with your friend of glorious memory, Giacomo, Bishop of
Lombez, and that, while he followed in your footsteps and always and
invariably preferred Jerome, I used to give the palm among all our
Catholic writers to Augustine. And--well, I believe upon reflection
that I will dismiss my fears of offending either the truth or your
susceptibilities, my father, and say precisely what I think. There
are many bright stars, of varying magnitude; one we may call Jupiter,
another Arcturus, another Lucifer, but the great Sun of the Church is
surely Augustine.
This, however, as I have implied, is a matter on which I am not
disposed to lay much stress. Freedom of choice can harm no one; freedom
of judgment must be respected. But the statement that follows, that
among ethical writers you place Valerius highest, does amaze me; that
is, if you were speaking seriously and will abide by what you say,
and not jestingly, just for the sake of trying me. For if Valerius is
first, where pray does Plato stand? and Aristotle? and Cicero? and
Annæus Seneca, whom good judges have ranked as a moralist above them
all? Perhaps Plato and Tullius will have to be dropped from my list,
however, on grounds that you have stated elsewhere in your letter.
For, to my great astonishment--I really cannot conceive what you were
thinking of--you declare that they are poets, and ought to be admitted
to the poetic choir! If your saying so should make it so, you would
accomplish more than you imagine. Apollo would smile upon you and the
Muses applaud, when they found you introducing your distinguished new
denizens to the hills and groves of Parnassus.[2]
What in the world induced you to think or say such a thing, when it is
so plain that Tullius in his early works is the greatest of orators,
and in his later an eminent philosopher? Besides, while we feel
everywhere that Virgil, for instance, is a poet, Tullius is nowhere so.
What we read in the _Declamations_ is certainly true, that Virgil's
felicity deserted him when he wrote in prose, and Cicero's eloquence
when he wrote in verse. And then what am I to say of Plato, who by the
consensus of all the greatest judges is not a poet at all, but the
prince of philosophers? Turn to Cicero, to Augustine, to other writers
who speak with authority, as many of them as you please, and you will
find that wherever in their books they have exalted Aristotle above the
rest of the philosophers they have always taken pains to declare that
Plato is the one exception. What it is that makes Plato a poet I cannot
imagine, unless it be a remark of Panætius, quoted by Tullius, where
he is denominated the Homer of philosophy. This means nothing more
than chief of philosophers; as preëminent among them as Homer among
the poets. If we do not explain it so, what are we to say of Tullius
himself, when in a certain passage in the letters to Atticus he calls
Plato his God? They are both trying in every possible way to express
their sense of the godlike nature of Plato's genius; hence the name of
Homer, and, more explicit still, that of God.
Next, prompted by this reference to Cicero and Plato, you
discourse--with wonderful eloquence and charm for one who is speaking
about things that he does not understand--upon the poets in general,
entering into an enthusiastic discussion of the identity of one and
another of them, the time when they were born, the characteristics of
their style, the particular kind of poetry that they affected, and
their place upon the roll of fame. To review all this in detail would
be too long a task,--so numerous are the things which none of us had
ever heard of before, but you have now disclosed to such of us as are
eager to learn, in this eloquent epistle. And yet on second thought,
if you will concede to me, or rather not to me but to my calling,
the right to offer just one objection, I shall express my wonder at
finding the names of Nævius and Plautus so entirely unknown to you
that you think me guilty of a solecism in inserting them in my letter,
and reprove me indirectly for daring, as Flaccus puts it, to invent
characters before unheard of. You do not make this charge in so many
words, but your doubts are such and so stated as to amount to nothing
less than a condemnation of my temerity in bringing upon the stage
names that are strange and foreign. It is true, you did in the end
curb your longing to speak plainly, and with your usual courtesy and
modesty chose to blame rather your own ignorance. And yet, unless I
am greatly mistaken, it is one of those cases where a man's words say
one thing but his real convictions loudly proclaim another. I wonder
at this, for Terence you seem to know very well, and he, at the very
beginning of his works, in the prologue of the _Andria_, makes definite
mention of Nævius and Plautus, and, in the same verse, of Ennius too.
Then in the _Eunuchushe_ refers to them again, and in the _Adelphi_
speaks of Plautus alone. Cicero, too, mentions them together, in his
_De Senectute_, and Aulus Gellius in his _Nodes Atticæ_, where he gives
their epitaphs, in old-fashioned Latin. All this argument is needless,
however, for who ever heard the name of poetry apart from the names of
these two men? Your amazement therefore fills me with amaze; and I beg
you, my father,--if you will let me speak freely,--not to allow these
lucubrations of yours to pass into any hands but mine. The brighter
one's renown, the more carefully should it be guarded. To me, indeed,
you may say whatever you wish, as freely as to yourself. You may change
and retract, as scholars have to do when they commune with their own
past thoughts. But when your words have gone abroad all power of choice
is taken away, and you must submit to whatever judgments the multitude
may pronounce upon you. I send your letter back to you in safe custody,
and send this with it, keeping a copy, though, simply that I may be
able, if you should desire to continue the discussion, to place your
arguments by the side of mine which called them forth, instead of
having to tax my memory for what I had said....
In writing thus I do not for a moment forget that a letter of reproof
addressed to a father by a son can scarcely fail to seem harsh and
rude. But you must let my love for you excuse such boldness. My regard
for your reputation compels me to speak, for if I keep silent you will
be sure to hear these things from others, or, still worse, will be
injured by severe judgments uttered behind your back....
Let me say, then, that I detect in your writings a constant effort to
make a display. This, I take it, accounts for your tendency to roam
through strange volumes, culling out fine passages to weave into your
own discourses. Your pupils, amazed at such an array of names, applaud
you and call you omniscient, just as if you really knew every author
the titles of whose books your memory happens to retain. Scholars,
however, find it easy to discriminate between a man's acquisitions and
his borrowings; easy, too, to determine what portion of the latter he
has a right to, what he holds by precarious tenure, and what he has
simply stolen; when he has drunk deep, from a full fountain, and when
he has taken only a hasty sip.
It is a childish thing to glory in a mere display of memory. As Seneca
has said, it is unseemly for a grown man to go gathering nosegays;
he should care for fruit rather than flowers. But you, in spite of
your years and the venerableness that they have brought with them; in
spite of the fact that you are of great eminence in your profession;
indeed,--for this task of taking you down is a thankless one, and I am
glad now and then to try smoothing you down instead,[3]--are the very
first man of your time in the department of literature to which you
have devoted yourself, nevertheless, like a truant child, break bounds,
and go wandering away into fields where you do not belong, and spend
the evening of your days in picking pretty flowers. You seem to take
delight in exploring new regions, where the paths are unknown to you
and you are sure to go astray once in a while or fall into a pit. You
like to follow the example of those who parade their knowledge before
their doors, like so much merchandise, while their houses within are
empty. Ah! it is safer to be something than to be always trying to seem
to be. Ostentation is difficult and dangerous. Moreover, just when you
are most desirous of being deemed great, innumerable little things
are sure to happen which not only reduce you to your true dimensions
but bring you below them. No one intellect should ever strive for
distinction in more than one pursuit. Those who boast of preëminence in
many arts are either divinely endowed or utterly shameless or simply
mad. Who ever heard of such presumption in olden times, on the part of
either Greeks or men of our own race? It is a new practice, a new kind
of effrontery. To-day men write up over their doors inscriptions full
of vainglory, containing claims which, if true, would make them, as
Pliny puts it, superior even to the law of the land. But when one looks
within--ye gods! what emptiness is there!
So, in conclusion, I beg you, if my words have any weight, to be
content within your own bounds. Do not imitate these men who are all
promise and no performance; who, as the comic poet has said, know
everything and yet know nothing. There is a certain wise old Greek
proverb that bids everyone stick to the trade that he understands.
Farewell.[4]
1: _Fam_., iv., 15. Giovanni Andrea(✝1348), whose lectures Petrarch had
attended when at the University of Bologna, was renowned as an expert
in the canon law; he was called "the Archdoctor of the Decretum," and
held his chair in the University for no less than forty-five years.
His extant writings do not exhibit the ignorance which Petrarch here
exposes. He was perhaps, as Fracassetti suggests, _un poco più cauto e
considerato_ in his books than in his lectures to his students and his
letters to his friends. _Cf. Let. delle Cose Fam_., i., 568 _sqq_.
2: Petrarch not infrequently said sharp things, and said them well,
as here. He is witty, too, at times. He often indulges, also, in a
quiet jest or a bit of banter. He habitually takes the mellow tolerant
view of harmless follies and foibles. But humour, pure and simple, of
the highest type, the humour that is a deep and essential part of a
man's nature, and that consequently is all-embracing and ever-present,
he lacks. To this lack may be ascribed, in his life, the tendency to
take himself at times somewhat too seriously; and, in his writings,
the absence of that saving sense of 'the little more' and 'the little
less' without which perfect proportion and perfect taste are well-nigh
impossible in artistic productions.
3: The original demands some such forced play upon words: 'ut non
semper pungam sed interdum ungam.'
4: The old jurist did not take this criticism kindly, but made an angry
effort to justify himself; whereupon Petrarch wrote again, exposing
his ignorance and childishness more savagely even than in this first
epistle.
* * * * *
_The Young Humanist of Ravenna._
_To Boccaccio_[1]
A year after your departure I had the good fortune to secure the
services of a fine, generous, young lad, whom I am sorry you do not
know. He knows you well, for he has often seen you, at Venice, in your
house,[2] where I am now living, and also at the home of our friend
Donato, and on such occasions has observed you very carefully, as
is natural at his age. I want you to know him, too, so far as that
is possible at such long range, and to see him with the mind's eye,
when you read my letters, and so I will tell you a little about him.
He was born on the coast of the Adriatic, at about the time, if I am
not mistaken, when you were living there,[3] with the former lord of
that region, the grandfather of him who now holds sway. The lad's own
family and fortune are humble. But he is well endowed, nevertheless.
He has a force of character and a power of self-control that would be
praiseworthy even in old age; and a mind that is keen and flexible; and
a memory that is rapacious, and capacious, and, best of all, tenacious.
My bucolics, which are divided off into twelve eclogues, as you know,
he committed to memory within eleven days, reciting one section to me
each evening and two the last time, repeating them without a single
hitch, as if he had the book before his eyes. Besides that, he has
himself a great deal of invention,--a rare thing in these days,--and a
fine enthusiasm, and a heart that loves the Muses; and he is already,
as Maro hath it, making new songs of his own; and if he lives, and
his development keeps pace with his years, as I am confident it will,
he surely will be something great, as was prophesied of Ambrose by
his father. There is much to be said for him even now, at an age when
usually there is very little to say. Of one of his good tendencies
you have just heard. You shall hear now of another, a trait that
constitutes the best possible foundation for sound character and solid
intellectual attainments. As the common herd loves money and longs to
possess it, even so, and more, does he hate it and spurn it. To 'add to
golden numbers golden numbers' he considers labour worse than lost. He
is scarcely willing to acquire the necessaries of life. In his love
of solitude, his fasting, his vigils, he vies with me, often surpasses
me. In brief, his character has so recommended him to me that he is
every bit as dear to me as a son whom I had begotten; perhaps dearer,
because a son--such alas! are the ways of our young men nowadays--would
wish to rule, while all his study is to obey, to follow not his own
inclinations but my will, and this not from any selfish motive, such as
the hope of reward, but solely from love and, possibly, an expectation
of being benefited by association with me....[4]
And now I come, at the close, to what really was first in my thoughts.
The lad has a decided leaning toward poetry; and if he perseveres
in his efforts, till in due time he learns to think clearly and
vigorously, he will compel your wonder and your congratulations. But
so far he is vague and uncertain, because of the feebleness of youth,
and does not always know what he wants to say. What he does want to,
however, he says very nobly and beautifully. So it frequently happens
that there falls from him some poem that is not only pleasing to
the ear but dignified and graceful and well-considered, the sort of
work that you would ascribe, if you were ignorant of the author, to
some writer of long experience. I am confident that he will develop
vigour of thought and expression, and work out, as the result of his
experiments, a style of his own, and learn to avoid imitation, or,
better, to conceal it, so as to give the impression not of copying
but rather of bringing to Italy from the writers of old something
new. Now, however, imitation actually is his greatest joy, as is usual
at his time of life. Sometimes his delight in another's genius seems
to lend to his spirit wings, and he defies all the restraints of his
art and soars aloft, so high that he cannot continue his flight as he
should, and has to descend in a fashion that betrays him. The strongest
of all these admirations is for Virgil. It is marvellously strong.
He thinks very many of our poets worthy of praise, but Virgil worthy
almost of worship. He loves him so, is so fascinated by him, that he
often takes pains to weave bits from his poems into his own verse.
I, rejoicing to find that he is overtaking me and longing to see him
press on and become what I have always aspired to be, warn him, in a
fatherly and friendly fashion, to consider carefully what he is about.
An imitator must see to it that what he writes is similar, but not the
very same; and the similarity, moreover, should be not like that of a
painting or statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a
son to a father, where there is often great difference in the features
and members, and yet after all there is a shadowy something,--akin
to what our painters call one's _air_,--hovering about the face,
and especially the eyes, out of which there grows a likeness that
immediately, upon our beholding the child, calls the father up before
us. If it were a matter of measurement every detail would be found to
be different, and yet there certainly is some subtle presence there
that has this effect.
In much the same way we writers, too, must see to it that along
with the similarity there is a large measure of dissimilarity; and
furthermore such likeness as there is must be elusive, something that
it is impossible to seize except by a sort of still-hunt, a quality to
be felt rather than defined. In brief, we may appropriate another's
thought, and may even copy the very colours[5] of his style, but we
must abstain from borrowing his actual words. The resemblance in the
one case is hidden away below the surface; in the other it stares
the reader in the face. The one kind of imitation makes poets; the
other--apes. It may all be summed up by saying with Seneca, and with
Flaccus before him, that we must write just as the bees make honey,
not keeping the flowers but turning them into a sweetness of our own,
blending many very different flavours into one, which shall be unlike
them all, and better.
I often say such things, and he always listens as he would to his
own father. It happened the other day, though, as I was advising him
in this fashion, that he offered the following objection. "I see your
meaning," he said, "and I admit the truth of all that you say. But the
occasional, sparing, use of others' words,--that is a thing for which I
have abundant warrant, in the practice of very many of our poets, and
of yourself above all." I was amazed, and replied, "If ever you have
found such things in my works, my son, you may be sure that it is due
to some oversight, and is very far from being my deliberate intention.
I know that cases of this sort, where a writer makes use of another's
words, are to be found by the thousand in the poets; but I myself
have always taken the utmost pains, when composing, to avoid every
trace both of my own work and, more particularly, of my predecessors',
difficult though such avoidance is. But where, pray, is this passage
of mine, by which you justify yourself?" "In your bucolics, number
six, where, not far from the end, there is a verse that concludes with
these words: _atque intonat ore_." I was astounded; for I realised,
as he spoke, what I had failed to see when writing, that this is the
ending of one of Virgil's lines, in the sixth book of his divine poem.
I determined to communicate the discovery to you; not that there is
room any longer for correction, the poem being well known by this time
and scattered far and wide, but that you might upbraid yourself for
having left it to another to point out this slip of mine; or, if it
has chanced to escape your own notice so far, that you might learn of
it now, and at the same time might be led to reflect on the fact that
we mortals, all of us,--not I alone, who with all my zeal and industry
am handicapped by insufficiency of talent and literary training,
but all other men as well, however great their learning and their
abilities,--are so limited in our powers that all our inventions have
some element of incompleteness, perfection being the prerogative of him
alone from whom proceeds the little that we know and are able to do.
Then, in conclusion, I want you to join me in praying Virgil to pardon
me, and not harden his heart against me for unwittingly borrowing--not
stealing--these few words from him,--who himself has stolen outright,
many and many a time, from Homer, and Ennius, and Lucretius, and many
another poet. Farewell.
PAVIA, Oct. 28, [1365].
1: _Fam_., xxiii., 19
2: The reader must not be led by this _facon de parler_ to infer that
the impecunious Boccaccio owned a mansion in Venice. Petrarch was
fond of speaking of his own possessions as belonging to his friends;
he refers here to the house furnished him by the Venetian government
in exchange for his library. Boccaccio had visited him there, in the
summer of 1363, some two years before this letter was written.--For the
discussions to which the description of this brilliant youth have given
rise the reader is referred to Fracassetti's long note, _Let. delle
Cose Fam_., v., 91 _sqq_.
3: At Ravenna.
4: For the passage here omitted see p. 150 _sq_. above. (But should I
ever find a resting place...)