The growing disorder in our family affairs did not at first deprive us boys of a sound education. My two elder brothers, Gasparo and Francesco, went to public schools,[104] and were in time to drink at all the fountains of the regular curriculum. Extravagant expenditure, however, combined with the needs of a numerous progeny, soon rendered anything like an adequate course of studies impossible for the younger children. I was intrusted for some years to a learned country-parson, and then to a priest in Venice, of decent acquirements and excellent morality. After this I entered the academy of two Genoese priests, who supplied instruction to some youths of noble birth, and to some of no nobility whatever. There were about twenty-five pupils in this academy. We pursued the same studies, with some difference according to our classes. Here I had the opportunity of observing that teachers are very valuable guides to youths who love learning, and mere images of ineffectual deities to such as hate it. For my part, being fond of books and eager for information, I imbibed my fill of such instruction as a boy can acquire before the age of fourteen. But sloth and vicious habits extirpate the seeds of learning planted by preceptors in the minds of ill-conditioned lads. Therefore I saw, and still see, more than two-thirds of my fellow-pupils sunk in a slough of baseness. Grammar, the classics, and rhetoric only taught them to get drunk in taverns, to carry sacks for hire upon their shoulders, and to cry "Baked apples, plums, and chestnuts!" about the streets, with a basket on their heads and a pair of scales slung round their waists. Wretched fate to be a father!
When I became aware that our domestic difficulties would prove an obstacle to my remaining long at school, I determined to utilise the little I had already learned, and to carry on my education by myself. My elder brother Gasparo's example, whose passion for study had won public recognition, and my own good-will, kept me nailed to books of all sorts; nor could I imagine any pleasure worth a thought, beyond reading, meditating, and writing.
Poetry, choice Italian, and correct style were then in vogue. The young men of Venice met to discuss these three topics, which have now been utterly forgotten—possibly for the greater advantage and convenience of our citizens. I see crowds of young people, hair-brained, conceited, idle, frivolous, presumptuous, and harmful to society. Heaven knows what their studies are! Not poetry, not the niceties of the Italian language, not correction of style. And then, forsooth, I am to admire a hurly-burly of well-born persons, who claim in their foolhardiness to be omniscient, who produce nothing whatsoever, who cannot write three lines of a letter which shall express their sentiments, and which shall not swarm with revolting faults of grammar and of spelling!
I will omit to observe that respect for nobles in a state is necessary; but that the respect shown simply for their birth and wealth is not respect but false feigned adulation. I will refrain from asserting that a daily correspondence, maintained with a large variety of persons—people who may not perhaps be scientific, but who understand whether a letter is well written or ridiculous—may be capable of securing a large part of the regard, or of occasioning a large part of the contempt, bestowed on nobles. I make no mention of the rich man in Signor Mercier's comedy of Indigence, who found it impossible to write a letter of the utmost importance because his secretary was away from home. I will say nothing to those scientific tutors of the scions of our aristocracy, who instil derision and disdain for polite literature and the art of elegance in diction into the brains of their pupils, moulding them into geometricians, mathematicians, philosophers, physicists, astronomers, algebraical professors, naturalists, a whole deluge of sciences, but who cannot after all their labour express in writing what they have taught or what the common business of life requires.
All these things, and everything which imposture has presented to my senses and impressed upon my mind, must remain unwritten in my pen. I have no wish to make enemies.
Yet we cannot prevent drops of ink from falling sometimes from the pen and making blots upon our papers. Just so, while I am dictating these memoirs of my life, I shall not be able to avoid splutterings, however out of place and inconvenient.
I am almost ashamed to confess the intense assiduity with which I applied myself to those frivolous literary studies of which I have been speaking. They brought on a hæmorrhage from the nostrils, so violent and so frequent, that I was more than once or twice given up for dead in the manner of Seneca.[105] In their anxiety about my health, my friends hid away all my books, and deprived me of paper and inkstand; but I was the cleverest of thieves in searching for them, and went on doggedly reading and writing by stealth in the uninhabited attics of our mansion. After relating this fact about my boyhood, malicious people may think that I am claiming to be considered worthy of a panegyric. They are quite mistaken. I fix them with my eyeglass, and assure them that it is rather my intention to provide them with another good reason for quizzing me. The famous Doctor Tissot angrily rebukes excessive application to those studies which are universally esteemed as useless. He reserves his praise for folk who ruin their health in pursuits considered beneficial to humanity; and such, I do not doubt, are the studies affected by himself and his admirers.
The Abbé Giovan Antonio Verdani, keeper of the select and extensive library of the patrician family Soranzo, was a man of vast literary erudition. He felt compassion for my weakness, which coincided with his own, and directed my reading by lending me the rarest books, masterpieces of pure Italian diction in prose and poetry. To estimate the quantities of paper which I covered with my thoughts in verse and prose, would be beyond my powers. I tried to imitate the style of all the early Tuscan writers who are most admired. Assuredly I never approached the perfection of their language; but I am none the less sure that the diligent and attentive perusal of a mass of the best works, treating of a vast variety of subjects, cannot fail to furnish a better head than mine with instruction and ideas, with the power of making just reflections and probable conjectures, and with the principles of sound morality. I am also convinced that the imitation of style in writing, pursued methodically, enables a man to express his own thoughts with facility, propriety of colouring, exactitude of phrase and term, according to the variety of images, grave or gay, familiar or dignified, which we desire to develop and to communicate under their true aspect in prose or poetry.
Without attaining to the mastery of style at which I aimed, I acquired the miserable satisfaction of finding myself in the very select group of persons who know this truth. I also earned the wretchedness of being forced to read with insuperable aversion and disgust the works of many modern Italian authors, which are full of false fancies and sophisms, the rhetoric and diction of which never vary however the subject-matter changes, which are defiled by all manner of gibberish, bombast, nonsense, with periods involved in unintelligible vortices, and with preposterous phraseology. The sciences, the discoveries, the branches of new knowledge which are now so loudly vaunted, ought to be accepted as useful, and are worthy of respect. For this reason it is wrong to profane them and to render them contemptible by barbarous impurity and impropriety of diction. Francesco Redi, that great man, great philosopher, great physician, great naturalist, confirms my doctrine by his written works.[106] As regards the literature of art and wit and fancy, it is obvious that without correction of style this is absolutely worthless and condemned to merited oblivion. No one could count the fine and ample sentiments which perish, smothered in the mire of inartistic writing. Not less numerous, on the other hand, are the small but brilliant thoughts, duly coloured with appropriate terms, and placed at the right point of view by a master-hand, which sparkle before the eyes of every reader, be he learned or simple.