Petrarca. In mine, rather disgusting than ludicrous: but Dante (we must whisper it) is the great master of the disgusting. When the ancients wrote indecently and loosely, they presented what either had something alluring or something laughable about it, and, if they disgusted, it was involuntarily. Indecency is the most shocking in deformity. We call indecent, while we do not think it, the nakedness of the Graces and the Loves. Boccaccio. When we are less barbarous we shall become more familiar with them, more tolerant of sliding beauty, more hospitable to erring passion, and perhaps as indulgent to frailty as we now are to ferocity. I wish I could find in some epitaph, "he loved so many:" it is better than, "he killed so many." Yet the world hangs in admiration over this; you and I should be found alone before the other. Petrarca. Of what value are all the honours we can expect from the wisest of our species, when even the wisest hold us lighter in estimation than those who labour to destroy what God delighted to create, came on earth to ransom, and suffered on the cross to save! Glory then, glory can it be, to devise with long study, and to execute with vast exertions, what the fang of a reptile or the leaf of a weed accomplishes in an hour? Shall anyone tell me, that the numbers sent to death or to wretchedness make the difference, and constitute the great? Away then from the face of nature as we see her daily! away from the interminable varieties of animated creatures! away from what is fixed to the earth and lives by the sun and dew! Brute inert matter does it: behold it in the pestilence, in the earthquake, in the conflagration, in the deluge! Boccaccio. Perhaps we shall not be liked the better for what we ourselves have written: yet I do believe we shall be thanked for having brought to light, and for having sent into circulation, the writings of other men. We deserve as much, were it only that it gives people an opportunity of running over us, as ants over the images of gods in orchards, and of reaching by our means the less crude fruits of less ungenial days. Be this as it may, we have spent our time well in doing it, and enjoy (what idlers never can) as pleasant a view in looking back as forward. Now do tell me, before we say more of the Paradiso, what can I offer in defence of the Latin scraps from litanies and lauds, to the number of fifty or thereabout? Petrarca. Say nothing at all, unless you can obtain some Indulgences for repeating them. Boccaccio. And then such verses as these, and several score of no better: I credo ch' ei credette ch' io credessi. O Jacomo, dicea, di sant Andrea. Come Livio scrisse, che non erra. Nel quale un cinque cento dieci e cinque. Mille ducento con sessanta sei. Pepe Satan, Pepe Satan, Pepè. Non avria pur dell orlo fatto crich. Petrarca. There is no occasion to look into and investigate a puddle; we perceive at first sight its impurity; but it is useful to analyse, if we can, a limpid and sparkling water, in which the common observer finds nothing but transparency and freshness: for in this, however the idle and ignorant ridicule our process, we may exhibit what is unsuspected, and separate what is insalubrious. We must do then for our poet that which other men do for themselves; we must defend him by advancing the best authority for something as bad or worse; and although it puzzle our ingenuity, yet we may almost make out in quantity, and quite in quality, our spicilege from Virgil himself. If younger men were present, I would admonish and exhort them to abate no more of their reverence for the Roman poet on the demonstration of his imperfections, than of their love for a parent or guardian who had walked with them far into the country, and had shown them its many beauties and blessings, on his lassitude or his debility. Never will such men receive too much homage. He who can best discover their blemishes, will best appreciate their merit, and most zealously guard their honour. The flippancy with which genius is often treated by mediocrity, is the surest sign of a prostrate mind's incontinence and impotence. It will gratify the national pride of our Florentines, if you show them how greatly the nobler parts of their fellow-citizen excell the loftiest of his Mantuan guide. Boccaccio. Of Virgil? Petrarca. Even so. Boccaccio. He had no suspicion of his equality with this prince of Roman poets, whose footsteps he follows with reverential and submissive obsequiousness. Petrarca. Have you never observed that persons of high rank universally treat their equals with deference; and that ill-bred ones are often smart and captious? Even their words are uttered with a brisk and rapid air, a tone higher than the natural, to sustain the factitious consequence and vapouring independence they assume. Small critics and small poets take all this courage when they licentiously shut out the master; but Dante really felt the veneration he would impress. Suspicion of his superiority he had none whatever, nor perhaps have you yourself much more. Boccaccio. I take all proper interest in my author; I am sensible to the duties of a commentator; but in truth I dare hardly entertain that exalted notion. I should have the whole world against me. Petrarca. You must expect it for any exalted notion; for anything that so startles a prejudice as to arouse a suspicion that it may be dispelled. You must expect it if you throw open the windows of infection. Truth is only unpleasant in its novelty. He who first utters it, says to his hearer, You are less wise than I am." Now who likes this? Boccaccio. But surely if there are some very high places in our Alighieri, the inequalities are per petual and vast; whereas the regularity, the con- | Are we therefore to suppose that every hand able tinuity, the purity of Virgil, are proverbial. Petrarca. It is only in literature that what is proverbial is suspicious; and mostly in poetry. Do we find in Dante, do we find in Ovid, such tautologies and flatnesses as these, Quam si dura silex. . aut stet Marpessia cautes Superatne.. et vescetur aura Etheria.. neque adhuc credelibus occubat umbris ? Omnes.. cœlicolas . . omnes supera alta tenentes. Scuta latentia condunt. Has inter voces.. media inter talia verba. Finem dedit.. ore loquendi. Insonuere cava.. sonitumque dedere cavernæ. Ferro accitam.. crebrisque bipennibus. Nec nostri generis puerum. . nec sanguinis. Boccaccio. These things look very ill in Latin; and yet they had quite escaped my observation. We often find, in the Psalms of David, one section of a sentence placed as it were in symmetry with another, and not at all supporting it by presenting the same idea. It is a species of piety to drop the nether lip in admiration; but in reality it is not only the modern taste that is vitiated; the ancient is little less so, although differently. To ay over again what we have just ceased to say, with nothing added, nothing improved, is equally bad in all languages and all times. Petrarca. But in these repetitions we may imagine one part of the chorus to be answering another part opposite. Boccaccio. Likely enough. However, you have ransacked poor Virgil to the skin, and have stripped bim clean. Petrarca. Of all who have ever dealt with Win ter, he is the most frost-bitten. Hesiod's description of the snowy season is more poetical and more formidable. What do you think of these icicles, Eraque dissiliunt vulgo; vestesque rigescunt! Boccaccio. Wretched falling-off. Petrarca. He comes close enough presently. Stiriaque hirsutis dependent horrida barbis. We will withdraw from the Alps into the city. And now are you not smitten with reverence at seeing Romanos rerum dominos; gentemque togatam? Come to Carthage. What a recommendation to a beautiful queen does Æneas offer, in himself and his associates! Lupi ceu Raptores; atrâ in nebulâ, quos improba ventris Exegit cæcos rabies! Ovid is censured for his Consiliis non curribus utere nostris. Virgil never for Inceptoque et sedibus hæret in iisdem. The same in its quality, but more forced. The affectation of Ovid was light and playful; Virgil's was wilful, perverse, and grammatistical. to elaborate a sonnet may be raised up against the majesty of Virgil? Is ingratitude so rare and precious, that we should prefer the exposure of his faults to the enjoyment of his harmony? He first delivered it to his countrymen in unbroken links under the form of poetry, and consoled them for the eloquent tongue that had withered on the Rostra. It would be no difficult matter to point out at least twenty bad passages in the Eneid, and a proportionate number of worse in the Georgics. In your comparison of poet with poet, the defects as well as the merits of each ought to be placed side by side. This is the rather to be expected, as Dante professes to be Virgil's disciple. You may easily show that his humility no more became him than his fierceness. Boccaccio. You have praised the harmony of the Roman poet. Now in single verses I think our poetry is sometimes more harmonious than the latin, but never in whole sentences. Advantage could perhaps be taken of our metre if we broke through the stanza. Our language is capable, I think, of all the vigour and expression of the latin; and, in regard to the pauses in our versifition, in which chiefly the harmony of metre consists, we have greatly the advantage. What for instance is more beautiful than your Solo.. e pensoso. . i piu deserti campi Vo.. misurando.. a passi tardi.. e lenti. Petrarca. My critics have found fault with the lenti, calling it an expletive, and ignorant that equally in Italian and Latin the word signifies both slow and languid, while tardi signifies slow only. Boccaccio. Good poetry, like good music, pleases most people, but the ignorant and inexpert lose half its pleasures, the invidious lose them all. What a paradise lost is here! Petrarca. If we deduct the inexpert, the ignorant, and the invidious, can we correctly say it pleases most people? But either my worst compositions are the most admired, or the insincere and malignant bring them most forward for admiration, keeping the others in the back-ground! Sonnetteers, in consequence, have started up from all quarters. Boccaccio. The sonnet seems peculiarly adapted to the languor of a melancholy and despondent love, the rhymes returning and replying to every plaint and every pulsation. Our poetasters are now converting it into the penfold and pound of stray thoughts and vagrant fancies. No sooner have they collected in their excursions as much matter as they conveniently can manage, than they seat themselves down and set busily to work, punching it neatly out with a clever cubic stamp of fourteen lines in diameter. Petrarca. A pretty sonnet may be written on a lambkin or a parsnep; there being room enough for truth and tenderness on the edge of a leaf or the tip of an ear; but a great poet must clasp the higher passions breast high, and compell them in an authoritative tone to answer his interrogatories. 321 We will now return again to Virgil, and consider in what relation he stands to Dante. Our Tuscan and Homer are never inflated. Boccaccio. Pardon my interruption; but do you find that Virgil is? Surely he has always borne the character of the most chaste, the most temperate, the most judicious among the poets. Petrarca. And will not soon lose it. Yet never had there swelled, in the higher or the lower regions of poetry, such a gust as here, in the exordium of the Georgics: Tuque adeo, quem mox quæ sint habitura deorum Boccaccio. Already forestalled! Boccaccio. Was it not enough to have taken all Varro's invocation, much enlarged, without adding these verses to the other twenty-three? Petrarca. Vainly will you pass through the later poets of the empire, and look for the like extravagance and bombast. Tell me candidly your opinion, not of the quantity but of the quality. Boccaccio. I had scarcely formed one upon them before. Honestly and truly, it is just such a rumbling rotundity as might have been blown, with much ado, if Lucan and Nero had joined their pipes and puffed together into the same bladder. I never have admired, since I was a schoolboy, the commencement or the conclusion of the Georgics; an unwholesome and consuming fungus at the foot of the tree, a withered and loose branch at the summit. Boccaccio. Virgil and Dante are altogether so different, that, unless you will lend me your whole Boccaccio. Very strange coincidence of opposite store of ingenuity, I shall never bring them to qualifications. Petrarca. Accipiat, cingens maternâ tempora myrto: An deus immensi venias maris. . . . bear one upon the other. Petrarca. Frequently the points of comparison are salient in proportion as the angles of similitude recede and the absence of a quality in one Boccaccio. Surely he would not put down man usually makes us recollect its presence in Neptune! Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis ? Boccaccio. Nobody in his senses would bid against her what indiscretion! and at her time of life too! Tethys then really, most gallant Cæsar! If you would only condescend to please her, With all her waves would your good graces buy, And you should govern all the Isle of Skie. Petrarca. Anne novum tardis sidus te mensibus addas? Boccaccio. For what purpose? If the months were slow, he was not likely to mend their speed by mounting another passenger. But the vacant place is such an inviting one! another; hence the comparison is at the same time natural and involuntary. Few poets are so different as Homer and Virgil, yet no comparison has been made oftener. Ovid, although unlike Homer, is greatly more like him than Virgil is; for there is the same facility, and apparently the same negligence, in both. The great fault in the Metamorphoses is in the plan, as proposed in the argument, primaque ab origine mundi In mea perpetuum deducere tempora carmen. Had he divided the more interesting of the tales, and omitted all the transformations, he would have written a greater number of exquisite poems than any author of Italy or Greece. He wants on many occasions the gravity of Virgil; he wants on all the variety of cadence; but it is a very mistaken notion that he either has heavier faults or more numerous. His natural air of levity, his unequalled and unfailing ease, have always made the contrary opinion prevalent. Errors and faults are readily supposed, in literature as in life, where there is much gaiety: and the appearance of ease, among those who never could acquire or understand it, excites a suspicion of negligence and faultiness. Of all the ancient Romans, Ovid had the finest imagination; he likewise had the truest tact in judging the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. Compare his estimate with Quintilian's of the same writers, and this will strike you forcibly. He was the only one of Boccaccio. I would not incommode him; I his countrymen who could justly appreciate the would beg him to be quite at his ease. Petrarca. et cæli justâ plus parte reliquit. Quicquid eris (nam te nec sperent Tartara regem Nec tibi regnandi veniet tam dira cupido, Quamvis Elysios miretur Græcia campos, Nec repetita sequi curet Proserpina matrem.) labours of Lucretius. Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti, And the kindness with which he rests on all the others, shows a benignity of disposition which is often lamentably deficient in authors who write | reason of a writer on husbandry, Cato or Colutenderly upon imaginary occasions. I begin to be inclined to your opinion in regard to the advantages of our Italian versification. It surely has a greater variety, in its usual measure, than the Latin, in dactyls and spondees. We admit several feet into ours: the Latin, if we believe the grammarians, admits only two into the heroic; and at least seven verses in every ten conclude with a dissyllabic word. Boccaccio. We are taught indeed that the final foot of an hexameter is always a spondee: but our ears deny the assertion, and prove to us that it never is, any more than it is in the Italian. In both the one and the other the last foot is uniformly a trochee in pronunciation. There is only one species of Latin verse which ends with a true inflexible spondee, and this is the scazon. Its name of the limper is but little prepossessing, yet the two most beautiful and most perfect poems of the language are composed in it; the Miser Catulle and the Sirmio. Petrarca. This is likewise my opinion of those two little golden images, which however are insufficient to raise Catullus on an equality with Virgil: nor would twenty such. Amplitude of dimensions is requisite to constitute the greatness of a poet, beside his symmetry of form and his richness of decoration. We have conversed more than once together on the defects and oversights of the correct and elaborate Mantuan, but never without the expression of our gratitude for the exquisite delight he has afforded us. We may forgive him his Proteus and his Pollio; but we can not well forbear to ask him, how Eneas came to know that Acragas was formerly the sire of high-mettled steeds, even if such had been the fact! But such was only the fact a thousand years afterward, in the reign of Gelon. Boccaccio. Was it then? Were the horses of Gelon and Theron and Hiero, of Agrigentine or Sicilian breed? The country was never celebrated for a race adapted to chariots; such horses were mostly brought from Thessaly, and probably some from Africa. I do not believe there was ever a fine one in Italy before the invasion of Pyrrhus. No doubt, Hannibal introduced many. Greece herself, I suspect, was greatly indebted to the inds of Xerxes for the noblest of her prizes on the Olympic plain. In the kingdom of Naples I have observed more horses of high blood than in any other quarter of Italy. It is there that Pyrrhus and Hannibal were stationary: and, long after these, the most warlike of men, the Normans, took possession of the country. And the Normans would have horses worthy of their valour, had they unyoked them from the chariot of the sun. Subduers of France, of Sicily, of Cyprus, they made England herself accept their laws. Virgil, I remember, in the Georgics, has given some directions in the choice of horses. He speaks unfavourably of the white: yet painters have been fond of representing the leaders of armies mounted on them. And the reason is quite as good as the mella, for choosing a house-dog of a contrary colour: it being desirable that a general should be as conspicuous as possible, and a dog, guarding against thieves, as invisible. I love beyond measure in Virgil his kindness toward dumb creatures. Although he represents his Mezentius as a hater of the Gods, and so inhuman as to fasten dead bodies to the living, and violates in him the unity of character more than character was ever violated before, we treat as impossible all he has been telling us of his atrocities, when we hear his allocution to Rhoebus. Petrarca. The dying hero, for hero he is transcendently above all the others in the Eneid, is not only the kindest father, not only the most passionate in his grief for Lausus, but likewise gives way to manly sorrows for the mute companion of his warfare. Rhoebe diu, res si qua diu mortalibus usquam, the worthy quadruped, on the brief duration of had passed the meridian of existence. Boccaccio. Francesco! it is a pity you had no opportunity of looking into the mouth of the good horse Rhoebus: perhaps his teeth had not lost all their marks. Petrarca. They would have been lost upon me, though horses' mouths to the intelligent are more trustworthy than many others. Boccaccio. I have always been of opinion that Virgil is inferior to Homer, not only in genius, but in judgment, and to an equal degree at the very least. I shall never dare to employ half your suggestions in our irritable city, for fear of raising up two new factions, the Virgilians and the Dantists. Petrarca. I wish in good truth and seriousness you could raise them, or anything like zeal for genius, with whomsoever it might abide. Boccaccio. You really have almost put me out of conceit with Virgil. Petrarca. I have done a great wrong then both to him and you. Admiration is not the pursuivant to all the steps even of an admirable poet; but respect is stationary. Attend him where the ploughman is unyoking the sorrowful ox from his companion dead at the furrow; follow him up the arduous ascent where he springs beyond the strides of Lucretius; and close the procession of his glory with the coursers and cars of Elis. THIRD DAY'S INTERVIEW. It being now the Lord's day, Messer Francesco thought it meet that he should rise early in the morning and bestir himself, to hear mass in the parish church at Certaldo. Whereupon he went on tiptoe, if so weighty a man could indeed go in such a fashion, and lifted softly the latch of Ser Giovanni's chamber-door, that he might salute him ere he departed, and occasion no wonder at the step he was about to take. He found Ser Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal wide open across his nose, and a pleasant smile on his genial joyous mouth. Ser Francesco leaned over the couch, closed his hands together, and, looking with even more than his usual benignity, said in a low voice, "God bless thee, gentle soul! the mother of purity and innocence protect thee!" declared that the animal had never exhibited such restiveness before. In fact, he never had experienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture, a green cap made its appearance, bound with strawcoloured ribbon, and surmounted with two bushy sprigs of hawthorn, of which the globular buds were swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet open. It was young Simplizio Nardi, who sometimes came on the Sunday morning to sweep the court-yard for Assunta. "O! this time you are come just when you were wanted," said the girl. "Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco's horse, and then go away about your business." The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco's hand, begging his permission. It was soon done. He then held the stirrup; and Ser Francesco, with scarcely three efforts, was seated and erect on the saddle. The horse however had somewhat more inclination for the stable than for the expedition; and, as Assunta was handing to the rider his long ebony staff, bearing an ivory caduceus, the quadruped turned suddenly round. Simplizio called him bestiaccia! and then, softening it, poco garbato! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he should leave the bastone behind, and take the crab-switch he presented to him, giving at the same time a sample of its efficacy, which covered the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but Assunta told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side of Ser Canonico quite up to the church-porch, "This is not the work for maidens," said he; having seen what a sad dangerous beast his reve"return to the house, good girl!" rence had under him. He then went into the kitchen, where he found the girl Assunta, and mentioned his resolution. She informed him that the horse had eaten his two beans, and was as strong as a lion and as ready as a lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the cheek, and called her semplicetta! She was overjoyed at this honour from so great a man, the bosom-friend of her good master, whom she had always thought the greatest man in the world, not excepting Monsignore, until he told her he was only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly across the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle and bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco, with his natural politeness, would not allow her to equip his palfrey. She lingered a moment, then went away; but, mistrusting the dexterity of Ser Francesco, she stopped and turned back again, and peeped through the half-closed door, and heard sundry sobs and wheezes round about the girth. Ser Francesco's wind ill seconded his intention; and, although he had thrown the saddle valiantly and stoutly in its station, yet the girths brought him into extremity. She entered again, and, dissembling the reason, asked him whether he would not take a small beaker of the sweet white wine before he set out, and offered to girdle the horse while his Reverence bitted and bridled him. Before any answer could be returned, she had begun. And having now satisfactorily executed her undertaking, she felt irrepressible delight and glee at being able to do what Ser Francesco had failed in. He was scarcely more successful with his allotment of the labour; found unlooked-for intricacies and complications in the machinery, wondered that human wit could not simplify it, and * Literally, due fave, the expression on such occasions to signify a small quantity. With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to Assunta, and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a canon of holy church, Simplizio did as she enjoined. And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and convents and churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard, and lost again; and at last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the faintness of them all. The freshness of the morning was enough of itself to excite the spirits of youth; a portion of which never fails to descend on years that are far removed from it, if the mind has partaken in innocent mirth while it was its season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of young and old passed the canonico and his attendant with mute respect, bowing and bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the tongue, which the frank and hearty salutation of the bearer was inadequate to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call back an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost he could obtain was a riveritissimo! and a genuflexion to the rider. It is reported that a heart |