Latin is no longer spoken, as our vernacular is, or French; it has been shut up in books. Since we are limited to gathering it not from actual speech, but from books, why not rather from the perfect than from the inferior? Let us first recall the language to the state in which we may believe it to have been while Vergil wrote it, or Cicero, and then confidently use that, even as Vergil did, or Cicero? (Trattato della imitatione, 1544.)
In 1545 Bartolomeo Ricci, tutor to Hercole d’Este’s son Lorenzo, closed his treatise De imitatione with a Ciceronian credo and a long defense of Longolius. Ciceronianism, then, survived both rebuttal and satire. As late as 1580 Muret, having renounced his own early Ciceronianism, attacked its major premise, the doctrine of the ideal great period. His argument is not, as Poliziano’s a hundred years before, pedagogical; it is a direct challenge to Renaissance competence in judging Latin style. His previous praelectio had urged the distinctive claims of Tacitus: practical philosophy, finished economy of style. This second lecture on Tacitus deals with objections. The preference for Suetonius he merely dismisses. But Tacitus is accused of inaccuracy. By whom? By Vopiscus; and who is Vopiscus? Tacitus is hostile to the Christian religion. Shall we rule out all the pagans? The rest of the lecture deals with style.
There remain two objections brought against Tacitus by the inexpert: that his style is obscure and rough, and that he does not write good Latin. When I hear complaints of the obscurity of Tacitus, I reflect how easily people transfer their own faults to others. [I remember the anecdote of the man who complained that the windows were too small, when the real trouble was his own failing sight. So a deaf man was heard to complain that people did not speak distinctly.]
But Tacitus, says another, is rough. Alciati, praising his friend Jovius, has not feared to call the histories of Tacitus thorny. Well, praising Jovius shows as much judgment as blaming Tacitus. No two could be more different. Tacitus could not but displease a man who made so much of Jovius.... For Jovius is all smooth; he has not a trace of that roughness which offends Alciati in Tacitus. He not only flows; he overflows.... As Alciati is afraid of roughness, I am sick of silliness. Sirup for babes; but let me have a bowl of something with a tang.
Finally, those who grant to Tacitus his other qualities still deplore his bad Latin. The first movers of this calumny, each of whom had spent much pains in expounding Tacitus, were Alciati and Ferret. If they themselves wrote Latin as well as they think, perhaps we might be disturbed by their authority. Do you make bold, some one may say, to judge such men? They have made bold to judge Tacitus.... [If we can know Latin (as Camillo says) only from books (and, we may add, from comparatively few books), we have the less warrant for judging Latin usage.]... Who dare affirm for certain today, when “the old authors” are so extolled, that the questioned phrases of Tacitus were never used by these “old authors?” (Leipzig ed. of 1660, vol. II, pp. 108-112.)
Even now, perhaps, though the name of the heresy has long been forgotten, the Ciceronian perversion of imitation is not extinct. But if this kind of imitation is not valid, what kinds are valid? Imitation of style may be suggestive when it remains subconscious, not the recalling of words, but the adaptation of remembered rhythms. The deliberate conformity proposed by Ciceronianism can be useful only as exercise, as the learning of certain effects by trying them. Once learned, these become an added resource in revision. In composing, in the creative process of bringing one’s message to one’s audience, deliberate imitation of style has no warrant. It would at least interrupt, and might deviate or inhibit. In so far as Ciceronianism confuses two processes normally separate, composing and revising, it tends to make style stilted.
Further, Ciceronianism narrows imitation by a theory of perfectionism. The Imitatio Christi (about 1460) is the direct appeal of an author preoccupied with his message. Sébastien Châteillon (1515-1563) rewrote its spontaneous Latin in Ciceronian cadences. It was imperfect; he would make it perfect. If this was pedantic, even absurd, wherein? If the Pilgrim’s Progress should not be rewritten in the style of Hooker or of Sir Thomas Browne, why? Because the one ideal style is an illusion.
Finally, imitation need not be of style; it may be of composition; and for writing addressed to an actual public this is at once more available and more promising. For real writing, that is for a message intended to move the public, imitation generally risks less, and gains more, in guiding the plan, the whole scheme, the sequence. Renaissance preoccupation with style and tolerance of published themes tended to obscure the larger opportunity.